


Am I More Than You Bargained For Yet?

by Nacre_Voit



Category: The 1975 (Band)
Genre: Anal Sex, Biting, Bruises, But there's a possible coercion and lack of clear consent trigger warning on some parts of it, Drinking, Drug Use, Drunk Sex, Fingering, Foursome - F/F/M/M, Hand Jobs, Large Cock, M/M, Masturbation, Mirror Sex, Please look after urself, Possibly never gonna be finished because I'm a dirt fandom friend, Riding, Rimming, Rough Sex, Scratching, Size Difference, Slight Dom/Sub, Stoned Sex, This is gonna get pretty angsty, This was written and intended as a depiction of rough sex with enthusiastic consent, Unfinished, Unsafe Sex, Voyeurism, thigh-fucking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:12:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 45,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2732042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nacre_Voit/pseuds/Nacre_Voit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Bloody hell,” Matty murmurs as he finally meets George’s eyes, “we’re doing this aren’t we?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p> Matty and George fuck girls side by side in their hotel rooms. At some point, the girls disappear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Chain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LithiumCrystal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LithiumCrystal/gifts).



> Title by Fall Out Boy. Disclaimer about how I'm not and never expect to be professionally or personally associated with The 1975 or Matty Healy and George Daniel. I also feel like they'd disapprove of this completely. Particularly Matty. *pats fondly*
> 
> Big unsafe, irresponsible sex warning on this one. Don't try this at home if you're sleeping with more than one person or you're sleeping with one person but you've not both been tested, kids. 
> 
> Dedicated to LithiumCrystal, who inspires me to write pretty band dudes onto the dick, basically.

Matty doesn’t think it’s strange, that sometimes they fuck beside one another. Nothing feels strange about leading girls back to their hotel and falling onto their beds a few metres apart, laughing and drunk and horny as their one-night stands strip off their clothes. Matty doesn’t feel weird about knowing how George likes to fuck, slower and deeper and rougher than him, and that when George is stoned, he likes girls to ride him, his slender hips slowly grinding up into their bodies. They’ve always shared so much, from hopes and dreams to shitty, cramped rehearsal rooms and creaky single beds because they couldn’t afford anything more at the time. It just makes sense to Matty somehow, looking into one another’s eyes over the bodies of the beautiful girls who are suddenly interested in them, and both of them grinning when they do, because their lives are so surreal now. He wouldn’t do this with any other guy, but it still doesn’t feel strange with George.

It doesn’t feel strange until one night they’re not fucking around together, and Matty looks over at George’s empty bed and feels…bored. He’s lying on his hotel bed, naked and wet with sweat underneath this dreamy-looking model with messy hair, slightly crooked teeth and big blue eyes. She’s completely his type, and Matty had left the rest of the lads pretty early in the night because he’d wanted to get her in bed as quickly as he could. George is still off drinking somewhere, and normally it would be fine, obviously it _is_ fine, Matty tells himself, because he has a _beautiful_ girl on his cock. Matty tries to concentrate on the girl who’s riding him, running his fingers over her stomach and her breasts, but it’s useless. He’s losing his erection, and if he doesn’t do something soon it’s going to get pretty awkward.

“Hey,” he says, carding his fingers nervously through his hair as he puts a hand on her hip to steady her. “Look, this is gonna sound a bit out of nowhere, but do you wanna go get some food or something with me instead? You’re amazing; I’m just not holding my booze well tonight. Still a bit jetlagged, love, I’m so sorry.”

The girl gives him her pretty, crooked grin and pulls her top back down over her tits. Matty tries not to look too relieved.

“Matty Healy from The 1975 shouted me a smoothie,” she grins over her giant drink when they’re seated at one of those weird late-night diners Matty keeps winding up at in America. “Pretty neat.”

Matty smiles weakly and stirs his Coke with his finger, feeling a bit disoriented. He could be coming in this girl and instead he’s here, buying her a smoothie and wondering what’s going on with his head and his dick.

“It’s too bad George isn’t here too,” the girl grins.

 “Yeah,” Matty says, gazing out of the window and resting his head in his hand. “It’s too bad.”

 

*

 

Matty tells himself it’s because he likes showing off. He always has. It must be an ego thing, that little rush of arousal he gets when George looks over at him when they’re having sex with girls. The sex is always so good when he feels George’s eyes sliding over their entangled limbs like he’s _hungry_ , even though he’s balls-deep in another girl. It strokes Matty’s ego, to have something that George wants. And George always wants sex. Matty gets horny quick, and he gets tired, bored and irritable with whoever he’s fucking just as quickly. George’s desire is more of a slow burn. Matty’s watched him fuck a girl three times in one night, crawling over her body and thrusting his tongue and his cock inside her and rubbing his fingers on her cunt until she came so many times she started to stutter.

There’s always a restless desire in George’s dark eyes, and Matty gets an ego trip from that being turned on the girl that he’s with. And that’s all it is, he reminds himself. He’s gotten used to getting that extra kick from showing off to George when he’s getting sex, and now he’s getting bored more easily than he should. Matty decides not to bother trying get to get laid for the rest of the week so his body remembers how bloody fantastic girls are without George around.

Late that Saturday night, when Matty’s half-passed out in his bed with the lights out, George brings a girl back to their hotel. He doesn’t turn the light on, but Matty can hear the bed creak as their bodies fall onto it. He listens as George murmurs something to her, and looks over as they both laugh softly. Matty hadn’t bothered to shut the blinds of the hotel room, and the city lights spread out below the window cast enough light that he can see their shadows and their silhouettes as she giggles into George’s throat. He closes his eyes and tries to go to sleep.

Closing his eyes only heightens his other senses, and the sound of the girl whispering something to George suddenly seems loud. Matty feels his cock beginning to stir as George whispers back. _Fuck off_ , he thinks blearily, directing the thought at his body, but George makes an ‘Aahh’ sound as he thrusts inside the girl, and Matty’s cock is apparently more interested in that than sleeping.

He opens his eyelids just a crack and turns his head towards them in spite of himself. Matty can see the outline of George’s shoulder blades working as he thrusts, and the girl’s spine arching into it underneath him. Their bodies are blown up times ten in their shadows on the wall, and Matty’s eyes trail over the curve of the girl’s back and the slender muscles of George’s arms as he holds himself up on top of her. The girl’s tits press against George’s chest as she gets a fist in his hair, and George moans and kisses her. Their mouths are open, making wet sounds broken by murmurs and gasps, and Matty’s eyelids are still heavy, but he turns on his side towards them.

He’s naked under the covers of the hotel bed, and his cock is getting hard as he watches them. He lets the soft sheets brush over his erection as he turns, sucking his lip a little bit at the sensation, but he doesn’t touch it. The girl scrapes her nails down George’s back, and George throws his head back. Matty can hear him growling into her lips as they kiss again, and he’s mesmerised by her fingers, their shadowy silhouettes sliding lower and kneading George’s arse. Matty’s beginning to hear his own breathing coming too loud, so he slides two fingers into his mouth and sucks on them slowly. There’s a slow-building desire in his stomach as he drags his tongue between his fingers and watches George’s spine arch. By the time they’re finished, his cock is throbbing and his mouth is sore.

He has to wait until the girl’s left and George is passed out to get up and jerk off in the bathroom, his fingers between his teeth as he tugs his cock hard. George would take the piss out of him for days if he noticed he was as hard as fucking granite just from listening to him fuck.

Matty feels tired and sullen the next morning as George steps back into their room from the shower. George has a towel wrapped low around his hips, so the bones stick out above it with the last droplets of water clinging to them. Matty gives him a sour look.

“You could’ve told me you were gonna bring a girl back.”

“What?” George asks lazily, running his fingers through his wet hair.

“Last night. I was trying to sleep.”

“Fuck off, mate,” George grins. “You’ve brought girls back loads of times when I’ve been trying to pass out.”

Matty snorts.

“You _snored_ all through that. Look, all I’m saying is if you’d told me you were bringing someone back I could’ve brought a girl back as well instead of lying there feeling tired and bored as fuck.”

George rolls his eyes as he walks over to his bed to get dressed.

“Sure, Matty, next time I’ll tell the girl I’m with to wait a minute while I call my mate to tell him I’m getting laid. ’Cos girls love that. I know you think the world revolves around you now, but when I get my dick wet doesn’t.”

“Fine,” Matty says, getting up and walking out of the door. “ _Fine_.”

“Matty,” George calls out, sounding exasperated, but Matty ignores him.

 _Fine_ , he tells himself. _Fucking fine_.

 

*

 

The next night, Matty brings two girls back to their hotel, and fucks them both. And what’s most satisfying about it, what’s more satisfying than sliding into their wet cunts one after another, is hearing George wake up in the bed beside his and shift around in his groggy state as he tries to work out what’s going on. Matty doesn’t try to be quiet, and he smirks as he hears George’s breathing get heavier. It feels good: listening to George’s breath get deep and slow as he tries to control it. He looks over at George’s bed for a second when he’s close, and finds George’s dark eyes on his, his irises glistening in the dark. George’s mouth opens slightly as their eyes meet, and Matty manages to turn back to the girls underneath him as he seizes up and comes.

He brings two girls back again the next night, because he’s grumpier than he is tired, and George still doesn’t _get it_. It turns out George isn’t even in their room when they get back, and Matty’s almost forgotten about it and lost himself in the girls when he comes through the door.

Matty is lying on his back, with one girl riding his cock while he kisses the other one and thrusts his fingers inside her. George looks at them for a moment, then looks into Matty’s eyes and shrugs off his jacket, dropping it on the floor. He walks over to his bed, still looking into Matty’s eyes as he pulls his loose singlet over his head. Matty’s eyes follow him, and the girl on his fingers glances over at George and then grins back at Matty.

“Is your friend gonna join us?” she asks softly. Her smirk as she says the words makes Matty’s cock pulse.

“He’s probably tired,” he gets out, his hips jerking into the girl in his lap.

George undoes his belt, lies down and stretches out on his bed. The girl Matty’s fingering is checking him out and he knows it, letting his long fingers trail down his torso. He stops when the pads of his fingers are resting just over his cock. It’s thickening inside his briefs, getting larger every second, and Matty finds himself getting as distracted as the girl is as he tries not to look, his fingers losing their rhythm inside her. He slowly pulls them out and sucks on them, looking into her eyes, and her eyes darken as she leans down to kiss him.

Matty feels her jump and his eyes open. George is standing over them, stroking his fingers down her spine. He smiles down at Matty, and Matty gasps as the girl in his lap twists on his cock to look at his bandmate. The girl shudders under George’s fingers and leans back into them. George stops stroking and slowly extends his hand, looking into her eyes and smiling as he holds it out for her. The girl looks like she wants to pull him down on the bed and fuck him until he passes out, but she turns to Matty with a questioning look. Matty considers telling George to fuck off for about a second before he grunts and moves over on the bed.

The girl crawls backwards towards the base of the bed so that George can lie down underneath her, next to Matty. She’s wet enough for George to slide up inside her as soon as he’s got a condom on, and then he and Matty are lying beside one another as the girls ride their cocks. Matty looks up at George’s hands massaging the breasts of the girl in his lap and shudders, because his long fingers look so good rubbing over her nipples. The girls start kissing and touching each other, whispering to each other and giggling down at them, and Matty and George turn their heads to exchange smirks. George’s face is close for a second as they do, close enough for him to suck on George’s lower lip, and Matty blinks as he wonders why the fuck he’s thinking about that.

Their thighs are pressed together on the bed, and the place where their skin touches quickly gets damp with sweat. Matty feels more conscious of that damp patch of muscle than anywhere else on his body, even his cock. He wonders if George can feel his thigh tensing as he gets closer, and he struggles not to let his muscles tighten as their skin rubs together. George drags his fingers down the lower back of the girl on his lap, and then flips her over so she’s lying beside Matty. Matty exhales and lets his leg wind around hers. George’s tattooed arms are flexing as he thrusts deep inside her, and Matty’s skin feels slick as he tries to focus on the beautiful girl above him. Sweat is shining on George’s throat as George thrusts almost on top of him. Matty’s pulse is speeding like he’s had too many pills and he’s so turned on he feels like he’s suffocating.

He turns to the girl lying beside him and kisses her, his breath getting ragged as their tongues drag over each other with their mouths open. She moans into his mouth, and he can feel George kissing her throat. Matty arches his neck as the girl beside him tightens her leg around his, and George’s breath is damp on his neck. Matty realises she’s tensing up, her orgasm building, and reaches down to help out the girl on top of him, rubbing her clit as she flushes and arches in his lap. George leans back and gets his fist in the hair of the girl on Matty’s cock, dragging her in for a kiss as he thrusts into the girl underneath him. It’s wet and messy and mesmerising, and Matty’s cock pulses inside the girl’s body. She gasps as she breaks the kiss and leans down over him, getting her fist tight in his hair, so it hurts, and driving her hips down over and over.

Matty feels the girl beside him spasm, and George gasps as her muscles clench around him. His breath catches, and then he grabs Matty’s arm, his fingers clamping down around it as he thrusts hard inside the girl beneath him. A lot of George’s weight is braced on his arm, and Matty can feel his pulse hammering in his wrist on his skin. George curses and lets his head hang down above him, and Matty realises George is coming and shudders. The sensations of the fist tight in his hair and the tight wet cunt pushing down on his cock are making his spine tingle, but it’s George’s fingers, wrapped tightly around the tattoo on his upper arm, that push Matty over the edge. He bites his lip and whines as he spills inside the girl in his lap, and all through his orgasm he feels his pulse pounding under George’s fingers.

When George lets go of his arm Matty tenses it, still getting off on the soreness in the muscle as aftershocks crawl over his body. When he feels like he can use his limbs again, he leans forward and finishes the girl above him off with his fingers, pressing them into the sweet spot inside her and his thumb into her clit until she cries out and his fingers get wetter than they already were. He pulls them out and wipes them on his chest, turning his head to find George’s eyes on him. George is half-collapsed on the girl underneath him, their bodies entwined and their breath still coming in pants. Matty’s leg is still curled around the girl beside him, and George’s thigh is on top of his now, his calf rubbing against Matty’s as he makes sure he’s not crushing the girl.

Matty looks away from him and flushes as he feels George’s eyes linger on the wet lines that his fingers left on his chest.

The girls are dressed and out of the door within five minutes, grinning and murmuring something to each other as they tug on their jeans. Matty tosses the condom in the bin and kisses them goodbye without getting off the bed. He doesn’t bother getting off his bed to clean himself up when they’ve left either, turning on his side and dragging the sheet over his damp body. George’s breathing is deep beside him, and Matty doesn’t have the energy to shove him in the direction of his own bed.

When Matty wakes up eleven hours later, his drummer is still in his bed. George’s arm is draped over him, and his whole body smells like George’s sweat. The arm he’s lying on feels sore, and when Matty twists his neck to look at it there’s a bruise around his upper arm: a circle of discoloured bluish skin through his tattoo in the shape of George’s fingers. He presses his fingers into it softly and his pulse quickens. Matty wonders what the actual fuck is wrong with him.

He decides not to bring any girls back to the hotel for a while.

 

*

 

They’re lying on the sofa at another hotel a few nights later, stoned and watching trash on TV, and Matty suddenly wants to know what George’s mouth tastes like.

He reaches over George’s body, meaning to grab the bottle of tequila on the floor next to him and take a swig, even though they’ve had two thirds of the bottle tonight. George puts his hand on Matty’s lower back to steady him, and somehow Matty finds himself pulling back and going for George’s mouth instead.

George doesn’t kiss him back as Matty presses their lips together, but he doesn’t draw back either.

“You’re trashed,” George laughs as Matty’s mouth comes off his lips.

“Yeah, so?” Matty says nonchalantly, and this time when he leans forward, George opens his mouth.

George’s mouth is soaked with tequila, warm and wet and smoky underneath. Matty moans at the taste as George drags his tongue along his. He licks up the aftertaste of the joint they’d shared as George wraps his large fingers around his neck. Matty presses his palm against George’s chest until it feels almost damp against the bare skin. His eyes drag over George’s lips as he pulls away, and George smirks. Matty pushes himself back off George on the sofa and collapses, gazing blankly at the TV again.

“I’m trashed,” he says.

“Yeah,” says George. He puts his hand on Matty’s thigh as they watch the rest of the shitty 80’s cop movie.  

Matty doesn’t do anything about it, but he doesn’t take it off either.

 

*

 

Matty manages not to think about it too much for a couple of days. They’re busy with press and performing, and he’s usually too tired to dwell on the feeling of George’s fingers around his neck. He ends up digging his fingers into the bruise on his arm whenever no one’s looking, and the one time he’s not too tired to jerk off he pushes them inside the soft skin until his fingernails leave dents. And it’s enough, just. It’s enough until he walks in on George alone in their dressing room after a show, his back shining with sweat as he lights a cigarette. He’s facing away from the door, and Matty looks at his neck and his shoulder blades, stretching and glistening, blinks, and then shoves him into the wall.

“Matty, what the fuck?” George says as he drops his cigarette on the floor and has to push against Matty to kick it out with his foot. Matty pushes him again until his back is flat against the wall.

“You’re driving me crazy,” he mutters as he runs his fingers down George’s arms, pushing them against the wall and letting George’s sweat wet his fingers. He watches his fingernails scratch down George’s abdomen. “I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind.”

“If this is about bringing girls to the hotels, I fucking told you I –”

“Shut the fuck up, George, it isn’t about that.” Matty’s fingers fumble with George’s belt as he presses up into him.

“What are you doing?” George murmurs, but he isn’t pulling away as Matty pulls his belt open and goes for his jeans.

“This,” Matty says as he slides his hand inside George’s briefs. George’s cock is hardening under his fingers and Matty tugs it impatiently as he presses against his thigh. George gasps as his cock gets thick and swollen in Matty’s hand, his lips parting as Matty stokes up and down.

“Oh God,” he says, tilting his head back against the wall. His voice is low and throaty and Matty’s cock gets harder as it rubs against George’s thigh through their jeans. Matty licks at the sweat on George’s chest and George gasps again and drags him closer, so Matty’s crushed against his chest. They’re both shirtless and slick with sweat from performing under hot lights in a crowded venue for an hour, and their skin slides together as they arch into each other, their chests and their abdomens flush against each other on every upstroke of Matty’s fist. Matty bites back a whine as he works his fist around George’s cock, because his drummer's fully hard now, huge and pulsing in Matty’s fingers, and Matty almost can’t believe he’s fucking doing this.

He falters for a second, because he realises that this is something he has _no fucking idea about_ with George. They’ve heard each other jerking off because they’ve been travelling in confined spaces for so many years it would have been impossible not to, but Matty’s never seen George touch himself. He doesn’t know what George likes, when he’s alone, stroking his cock with that hot, strong hand that’s pressed against Matty’s shoulder blades. It throws him off: that idea of not understanding something about George, but he’s determined not to ask what he likes like some fucking groupie, so he wraps his fist around George’s cock and pumps it roughly until George hisses and thrusts into his fingers.  

Matty gets his teeth around George’s nipple and bites down, and George puts his fingers on the small of his back and pulls him closer again. Everything around Matty smells like George now, and he breathes in deeply and shudders as he sucks on George’s collar bone. He’s used to George’s smell because they’re always around each other, and Matty has no idea how it being stronger, _intense_ and all over him like it is now, is getting him off like nothing else he’s felt for years. His erection is aching inside his jeans, and he wants George to finish, finish in his fingers like this, so that next time he’s alone with his fingers around his cock he’s got something besides a fucking bruise to think about.

“If you come on my fingers, I’ll lick it off,” he says slowly, looking up into George’s eyes for the first time since he walked into the dressing room. George’s pupils are blown, and his eyes seem to widen on Matty’s before his eyelashes flutter and he groans, his head smacking back on the wall as he comes.

“What the fuck’s gotten into you?” George says softly, his breathing heavy as Matty lifts his sticky fingers to his lips.

“Your come, now,” Matty shoots back, licking the pearlescent white substance off his fingers and swallowing slowly.

“Jesus, Matty…” George says, his voice rasping as he watches Matty curl his tongue around his come-slicked fingers until they’re shining with saliva. When he’s licked up the last of it, Matty turns to walk out of the dressing room again, but George grabs him and slams him face-first into the wall, so Matty has to brace his arms against it to avoid smacking his face on the concrete.

“Fuck, George, do you want to break my fucking nose?” he gets out as George snakes an arm around his waist from behind and undoes his belt.

“Returning the favour,” George murmurs in his ear from behind him, and Matty gasps as George drags down the zipper of his jeans. His fingers press into Matty’s hard-on through the black fabric of his briefs. “If you want…”

George presses up behind up him, his fingers dragging slowly up the line of Matty’s cock.

“I’m not going to fucking ask you,” Matty snaps more breathlessly than he’d like as he presses hard into the fingers on his erection. “Get on with it or I’ll fucking do it myself.”

He feels George lean forward and grin against his throat, and then he yanks Matty’s briefs down and wraps his fingers around his cock. Matty’s hips jerk into his hand as he feels George’s breath on his neck, and when George has been stroking him for about a minute his arms are already feeling weak where they’re braced on the wall. Matty feels like he’d fall over if it wasn’t for George’s arm wrapped around his torso. George’s fingers are so long it feels like they’re touching every inch of his cock at once, and the pressure is fucking _perfect_. Matty bites his lip against it until he can’t suppress the shudders anymore, cursing and letting his head hang down as George strokes him slowly.

“ _Now_ you shut your fucking mouth for once,” George murmurs, and Matty’s cock pulses.

“Fuck you-” he snaps, but before he can finish cursing him out George lets go of his torso and shoves his fingers in his mouth.

“Shut up and suck or I won’t finish you.”

Matty groans around the fingers in his mouth and flushes, sucking resentfully as George thrusts his fingers in and out of his mouth. Matty can feel George’s smirk against his skin before he bites down on his neck, and there’s something about his thick fingers filling up his mouth that makes Matty shiver as his lips get slick with spit. George presses his bare, slick skin into Matty’s spine and Matty’s hips snap forward into his fingers as he shudders and comes. He bites down deliberately on George’s fingers, and George hisses, wrenching his fingers out of Matty’s lips when he’s finished. He looks at the deep indents Matty’s teeth have left in his fingers and curses, and Matty smirks.

The next night when they’re performing and he walks over to George, singing a few lines to him like he always does, Matty sees the bruises from his teeth on George’s fingers. He’s hypnotised by them for a second, and George’s eyelashes lower to his fingers, then he looks up at Matty, his dark eyes leering as he grins. Matty fucks up the line he’s supposed to be singing and almost trips over. _You’ll get this shit out of your system eventually_ , he tells himself as he tries to flush it out with tequila under the bright lights, but his cock still fills a little bit when he sings ‘Sex’, and he feels George’s eyes boring into the back of his head.

 

*

 

Matty is lying on the sofa with George, helping George write some music for some new lyrics he’s written. Matty’s helping mostly involves complaining about everything that George writes, but that isn’t his fault, he tells himself as he eye-rolls down another drum notation. He’s frustrated tonight, for reasons he doesn’t really want to explain to himself, and nothing is looking like he wants it for the song.

“No, that’s too fucking slow, George, God. This isn’t going bloody anywhere.”

George tears up the piece of paper he’s writing on and glares at him.

“Someone’s in a stroppy fucking mood. What the fuck is wrong with you, Matty?”

Matty fidgets and scowls, and the corner of George’s lip curls.

“You want to do it again, huh.”

“No, I don’t fucking want to do it again.”

George shrugs. Matty’s tongue is inside his mouth within a minute.

George pulls him half into his lap and gets both of their jeans open with his right hand as he strokes up Matty’s spine under his t-shirt. Matty bites George’s lower lip as George wraps his fist around both of their cocks at once, his fingers on Matty’s lower back, pushing him into his grip as his fist begins to pump up and down. George alternates between fisting Matty’s hair and digging his fingers into his spine, and Matty holds onto his arms, digging his fingernails in as his thighs start to ache where he’s spread and bent forward over George’s lap.

George drags his tongue over Matty’s teeth and fucks his mouth with it, wrenching his head back by the hair and staring at Matty’s parted lips as he gasps. Matty lets go of George’s arms and rakes his fingernails down his back, collapsing forward so that George is taking most of his weight as he buries his face in George’s throat. The friction of George’s fingers and George’s cock rubbing against his is already dragging him over the edge, and Matty’s breath starts to stutter as he presses his fingers into George’s chest and his neck.

“Wait,” George murmurs, and Matty wants to slap him.

“Fucking why?” he chokes out, but he grits his teeth and holds on.

George gives their cocks three more rough strokes before he pushes Matty back, yanks his shirt up under his arms, and comes on Matty’s chest. Matty hadn’t been expecting to be shoved backwards, and he only just manages to brace himself on his arms in time to not fall over. George’s come hits his chest, dripping over his nipples, and Matty’s so shocked his spine arches further into it and he comes. There’s come all over his chest now, George’s and his, sliding over the heart at the base of his tattoo. Matty manages to get a hold of his rolled-up t-shirt before George lets go of it, holding it up as he pants so it doesn’t get covered in come.

“Fuck, George,” he gets out as his chest heaves. “Fuck you!”

George grins at him lazily, his lashes dark and heavy.

“So…” George says as Matty snatches a box of paper towels that they were using for greasy food off the table and dabs uselessly at his chest.

Matty groans.

“We’re _not_ going to talk about it. For fuck’s sake.”

George trails his fingers through the mess on Matty’s chest, gazing at the damp, sticky skin as he slowly smiles.

“Alright.”

 

*

 

They don’t talk about it, or go anywhere near each other _like that_ for almost a month. Matty’s appetite for sex gets so voracious that he’s with one girl or another almost every night, to the point where he’s got bags under his eyes and Adam and Ross both corner him on separate occasions to ask if he’s got some sort of sex addiction problem. _Fuck them_ , Matty thinks as he sits on the steps of his flat and smokes. He’s handling it.

He’s only got one night at his flat before they head off again, but George has come over anyway. He comes out of the door behind Matty and sits down next to him, offering him the joint he’s rolled when he’s finished his cigarette. They sit in silence as they smoke, and after a minute Matty looks over at George. Unlike Adam and Ross, he’s been sharing rooms with Matty on the tour as well as the bunks, and his eyes are a little pink around the edges, like he’s been rubbing them from lack of sleep. George looks subdued, and Matty feels guilty as he rubs their knees together.

“Hey,” he says, and George looks up. “You look wrecked, mate. It’s fine if you wanna crash here tonight.”

“Yeah,” George says with a distracted smile. “Yeah,” he says again, and then, “Matty…”

“Yeah?” Matty says, wanting to yell at himself to snap out of it as his pulse picks up.

“Do you think you could stop having girls back like, every night? I just…” George shrugs and runs his hand through his hair. “I’m just tired.”

Matty shrugs uncomfortably and stares straight ahead of him, for once not knowing what he wants to say.

“If it’s about me or something, Adam’s fine to switch with me,” George says, and Matty turns to him.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, I just…” George sighs, looking frustrated as he drags his hands up and down his thighs. Matty sucks in smoke and glowers down at the rips in his jeans. “Fuck it,” George mutters, wrapping the fingers of his left hand around Matty’s neck and pressing their lips together. Matty starts, and his mouth is full of smoke, but George doesn’t pull away. Matty can feel him breathing the smoke out through his nose as he sucks it out of Matty’s mouth, and he moans into George’s mouth in spite of himself.

George deepens the kiss and Matty slides his fingers inside those rips on George’s thighs, moving closer to George’s body on the steps. He finds himself nodding as they break apart.

“Alright. I’ll try to slow down with the girls.”

George doesn’t sleep at Matty’s flat that night, but he leans his head down on Matty’s shoulder while they smoke the rest of the joint in silence, his eyelids heavy as their thighs press together. He forgets his jacket when he leaves, and Matty presses his face into it and jerks off, shuddering and groaning as he comes in his fist.

He wonders if Adam and Ross have sort of got a point about him.

 

*

 

Matty manages to slow down with the girls a lot. He focuses on writing lyrics and getting shitfaced with George whenever they’ve got the opportunity. The tired pink rims around George’s eyes clear up after a few days, and sometimes, when they’re wasted and laughing over something stupid, he slides his fingers up Matty’s lower back inside his shirt. Matty starts pressing his spine back into George’s fingers before they even touch his skin, and he feels something weird in his stomach when George drags them around in circles over the small of his back. He’s fucked if he’s gonna call it something naff like ‘butterflies’, but he feels like he could get used to it. Or like he wants more of it.

“Hey, wanna play Bird’s Eye Potato Waffle?” he slurs to George, collapsing on his bed when they arrive back at their hotel room one night. George raises his eyebrows at him as he pulls off his shirt.

“With just two of us, while you’re plastered, and we’re not even bored. Yeah, wonderful idea, Matty.”

Matty scowls at him from his bed.

“You’re such a tit!” he yells, slumping back on the bed as George grins. “ _I’m_ bored!” George drops his shirt on the floor and goes into their bathroom, closing the door behind him. Matty picks up the bottle of red wine on his bedside table and sucks on it, feeling petulant as he listens to the shower start running. The sweet red feels good flowing over his tongue as he drags off his shirt and his jeans.

Matty can’t remember why he bought it, because usually he likes it dryer, but it feels good, tonight. He hasn’t kissed a girl for more than a month, and Matty guesses he’s missing the taste of their mouths from the sweet things they sometimes drink. Mostly he just misses their skin on his. He’s bored and drunk and pent-up, and he looks at the bathroom door intently as he wonders if he’s got enough time to jerk off before George finishes showering. He thinks George is probably stoned, because George almost always is. Matty shrugs and skins up completely, wrapping his fist around his cock. He figures George will be in the shower for a while.

He’s fully hard and arching into his fist when George steps out of the bathroom door. Matty’s eyes widen and he looks wildly over at the digital clock beside his bed. George was only in the shower for like six minutes, and Matty almost curses in frustration.

“Quickest shower you’ve ever had,” he tells him breathlessly, slowly letting go of his cock. George looks at him through wet eyelashes, blinking slowly and looking down at Matty’s crotch. He’s dripping water on the carpet, and it clicks in Matty’s head as he swallows and looks up George’s wet body that he hasn’t bothered with drying himself. Every part of him is drenched, and rivulets of water are running down his shoulders and his torso from his hair, like he’s just walked out of the shower and stopped in front of Matty’s bed. Matty’s fingers shake a bit as he reaches for the wine bottle again.

“I heard you,” George murmurs, and Matty almost drops it as he puts it down again.

“Over the water?” he asks incredulously, and George steps slowly towards his bed.

“I’ve never heard anyone breathe so fucking loud,” George says, and Matty drags his eyes away from a droplet of water sliding down his chest. He’s trying not to look lower.

“Fuck you,” he tells him, looking up into George’s eyes. George’s eyes are dark on his and he looks down at him, undressed on the bed, and inclines his head forward. Matty’s eyes widen and drop down to his cock, and he almost bites through his lip, because George is hard and flushed against his stomach, water running over his abdomen around his cock as he looks at Matty with those dark eyes. Matty steps off the bed, wrenching his eyes from the water shining on George’s pubic hair and slowly looking up George’s body.

“Bloody hell,” Matty murmurs as he finally meets George’s eyes, “we’re doing this aren’t we?”

They smash into each other like they’re starving, their teeth connecting as George yanks Matty’s hair back and Matty sinks his fingernails into George’s shoulder and arches his throat. Matty’s head is tilted back so far it’s painful, and he gasps as George’s teeth clamp down on his throat. He swears and wraps his arms around George’s neck as George grabs his legs and drags him off the floor, so Matty’s thighs are pressed hard against his waist as he digs his fingers into their sensitive undersides.

“Fuck,” Matty curses again, digging his sharp ankles into George’s lower back just above the curve of his arse. This isn’t a position he’d want anyone to find him in, but he’s already too far gone to care. His cock is pressing against George’s wet torso and sliding against it as George slides his fingers up his thighs and digs them into Matty’s arse. Matty realises he’s probably leaving bruises on George’s neck, and sticks his fingers into his skin harder and shudders, because he _wants_ to leave bruises. George snarls and stops just cupping Matty’s arse, his fingers extending and then _pulling_ , opening and exposing Matty until he whines and sinks his teeth into the pale skin of George’s shoulder.

George drops him on his bed on his arse and then falls on Matty’s body like he _owns_ it, his tongue sliding inside Matty’s mouth and his chest pressing down hard on Matty’s heart as he wraps his fist around his cock and spreads his legs. George wrenches the left one up and back and digs his elbow into the sensitive skin behind Matty’s other knee, smirking as Matty hisses and pulls his right leg back as well. Matty jerks in George’s hands as George tugs his cock so hard it almost hurts. He knows George has him where he wants him as his drummer leans back and looks between his thighs, and he doesn’t want to give in like this without biting back.

“Why don’t you ever fuck girls like this?” Matty says as George pushes his thigh back until it aches, looking down at Matty’s arse below his cock until Matty flushes. “ _Hard_.” George’s eyelashes flutter and he licks his lips, so they’re damp as he looks up at Matty’s eyes. George’s eyes are glazed and distracted from just _looking_ down where he wants to put his cock, and Matty smirks. “What’s the matter? Are you scared of girls? Or do you just want me more?”

George leans over Matty, running both of his hands up Matty’s aching thighs as he murmurs into his throat.

“I don’t let you watch all the times I _fuck_ ,” he breathes, and Matty suddenly stops smirking. George’s teeth graze over his throat, making him shudder. “What’s the matter?” George grins into the skin. “Do you wish I would?”

“You’re so full of it,” Matty mutters, turning his head into the pillow, but George puts his fingers on his chin and turns his head back, forcing him to look at his face as George pulls back and strokes his own cock.

“Nice choice of words,” George says. He’s smirking, but his voice is a bit hoarse as he looks down at Matty’s arse, and Matty sits up, swallowing as his eyes settle on George’s cock. It’s long and thick and flushed and _huge, fuck_ , Matty thinks as he feels a flush crawl up his neck, because he _knows_ George wants to put it inside him. The desire and dread in the pit of his stomach twist, and the pulse in his wrist feels like it’s trying to push out of his skin.

“Turn over,” George says. It’s almost a whisper, and Matty shivers as he feels a drop of his own sweat run down his neck.

“ _George_ ,” he says, looking into his eyes one last time, and turns onto his stomach.

The drawer on the bedside table shoots out too fast as George wrenches it open, and Matty’s snigger comes out as more of a nervous shiver as it falls on the floor and George curses, leaning over the bed to get the lubricant from the mess.

“Have you ever done this before?” he asks, trying to sound bored as George’s weight settles behind him on the bed again.

“Yeah, with girls,” George breathes as Matty listens to him slick his fingers. “I doubt it’ll be any different with you.”

“I am not one of your fucking girls, you _fuck_ ,” Matty snaps, trying to control a shudder as George’s slick finger circles his arse.

“You complain like one,” George mutters.

“I’ll tell Jessie you said that,” he gasps as the finger starts to push inside.

“What, while you’re telling her I fucked you up the arse?”

“It’s not my fault all the girls you fuck complain,” Matty rasps as George’s finger slides inside him past the second knuckle. “Your cock is fucking abnormal.” George shoves his finger harder inside him and Matty almost chokes on his tongue. George’s finger feels even larger inside him than he thought it would, long and slick and almost as thick as Matty thinks he can take where it’s stretching the muscle just inside him. “ _God_ , is that your fucking _thumb_?”

“It’s my index finger,” George tells him, slowing the thrusting motion of his finger inside him until it’s almost not moving at all. His voice is low and heavy with desire, but he suddenly sounds uncertain. “Look, if I’m gonna hurt you too much, I’ll…stop.” His voice sounds desperate, like stopping is the last thing he wants to do, but it’s also shot through with concern, and something tightens in Matty’s stomach.

“No, no,” Matty breathes, trying to sound like he isn’t feeling something inside his body ache and stretch as he pushes down on George’s finger, “I’m fucking with you. It literally feels like nothing.”

George’s finger pushes down softly, and Matty’s eyes widen as something inside him feels fucking _intense_ under it.

“You’re a fucking shitty liar,” George mutters, his fingers rubbing into Matty’s spine as he leans over him and sucks on his throat.

“I’m a fucking amazing liar,” Matty snorts, angling his hips to get George’s finger deeper inside him. _Just not with you_ , he thinks, flushing at the thought and arching as George’s finger puts pressure on that place inside him again. It sends a quick shiver of pleasure up his spine, and George notices, his fingers curling over Matty’s hip bone and pressing into it as his hips stutter.

“Shit, you _like_ it,” George breathes, angling his finger down again and pressing his chest against Matty’s back, and Matty’s relieved George isn’t looking at his face, because he knows his skin is pink and his pupils are blown.

“Yeah,” Matty says, his breath almost catching in his chest. “Yeah. I want more.”

Matty’s eyes tear up when George puts a second finger inside him. He closes his eyes and gasps, because if the pressure and the stretch from George’s finger had felt almost too intense, it hadn’t hurt like _this_. Matty feels too full, the stretch shooting pain up his spine as he panics and tenses around George’s fingers. He pants and digs his fingers into the sheets, feeling his fingernails push into the soft skin of his palms through the fabric as he desperately tries to adjust. Matty cries out as George stretches his fingers inside him, and George sucks in air and curses as Matty clenches around his fingers.

“Don’t tense up,” he says, digging his fingers into the knots in Matty’s neck and leaning down to drag his lips over his shoulders, leaving bites along the skin.

“Fuck you, it _hurts_ ,” Matty snaps, biting back against the tears welling up in his eyes from the pain.

“You feel like a fucking _vice_ ,” George tells him, his voice full of frustration as he tries to open Matty up with his fingers. “I’m not gonna be able to fuck you if you do that.”

Matty lets out a sob of frustration. He wants to strangle George.

“If you stop now, I will fucking poison you in your sleep,” he tells him, and George’s fingers run over the side of his neck. Matty turns his head towards the sound of George’s voice as George murmurs into his skin.

“I almost don’t want to wait…” George drags his tongue along Matty’s neck and twists his fingers, making him ache and gasp. “I could just jerk off on you. Watch my come dripping over my fingers inside you. Fuck, Matty, I can feel your pulse in your _arse_.” His fingers press down hard for a second, and Matty cries out again, but there’s something besides pain in his voice this time, and George doesn’t miss it.

“That’s it,” he says, stroking his fingers inside Matty again, and Matty whines and wriggles down on his fingers. He winces a bit as they push deeper inside, but it presses them into the sweet spot from before, and Matty groans as pleasure crawls up his spine and wraps around the pain until he doesn’t really know _what_ he’s feeling. He pushes his cock into the bed, flushing because his erection hasn’t flagged at all from the pain and from George’s fingers in his _fucking_ _arse, for fuck’s sake_. George is panting behind him as Matty begins to push back on his fingers. He works them in and out of Matty’s arse and curses breathlessly when Matty braces himself on his arms, his shoulder blades arching as he pushes himself down on George’s fingers.

“Well, look at you,” he says, and Matty rolls his eyes even as he shudders from the confused sensations slamming into his nerve endings.

“Pervert,” he shoots back, and he feels George grin against his neck as he bends his fingers inside him. He pulls Matty’s hair into a tight fist, making him hiss and arch his throat back as he fucks into the mattress. Matty moans as George pulls his fingers out slowly. It aches, but he also feels something like loss, as though his muscles _want_ to be stretched around George’s fingers again.

“Do you want my fingers to bite down on again?” George murmurs, his damp chest pressing into Matty’s skin as the head of his cock rubs against him. “Or does the pillow work for you?”

“You’re such a prick,” Matty says, but it’s almost a whisper, because George’s cock is pushing against his arse, a blunt, slick pressure that overwhelms him in seconds. When it presses inside him for the first time, Matty wants to scream. It’s big, bigger inside him than anything he’s ever felt before, and at first he feels like he’s going to tear apart. George is murmuring something, and Matty doesn’t understand it, gasping and shuddering as he tries to relax the tight circle of muscle wrapped around George’s cock. For a split second, he isn’t sure about anything, except the feeling of George’s breath wet on his neck, and that he still doesn’t want to stop.

George’s cock slides inside him another inch, and Matty turns his head towards him.

“All of it,” he rasps, “put it all in, fuck, just fucking do it.”

George’s arms are braced on either side of him, and George readjusts, gripping Matty’s fingers as he slides every last inch of his cock inside him.

“Shit,” George hisses. “ _Shit_ , Matty…” He’s gasping on top of him, and it turns Matty on through the pain, sending a dirty, shuddering throb of desire straight to his cock.

“Uh-huh,” Matty grinds out, digging his fingernails into George’s fingers as George adjusts his angle inside him, his arms flexing around him. The tears are spilling from Matty’s eyes this time, because the stretch and the pressure are agonising. George’s chest and stomach are pressing against him as George arches over him, the skin dragging along his spine still damp, and it distracts him from the ache up between his thighs just enough to let George pull out an inch and thrust slowly back inside him.

“How’s that?” George murmurs, thrusting that last inch slowly in and out.

“Like I’m being split open,” Matty tries to snap, but he just sounds breathless and raspy, as turned on as he is sore.

“Split open on my cock.” George’s voice is low and his grin is all teeth against Matty’s neck, but Matty can feel the muscles in his stomach straining against his lower back. The slow, slick drag of George’s cock inside him is making him _sick_ with pain and pleasure, putting pressure on those nerves inside him that make him shudder again and again even though his muscles are screaming. George is trying to control his breathing, but Matty feels his muscles tightening in his arm, screwed tight from holding back. Matty almost smirks as a tear slides over his lower lip.

“Like you want,” he whispers, and his voice sounds dirty and wrecked as he wriggles his skinny hips on George’s cock and gets what he’s trying to tell him backwards. “ _Fuck_ me.”

George loosens his fingers on Matty’s and adjusts the angle of his hips.

Matty heaves in a shuddering breath and flexes his fingers.

George slowly pulls almost all the way out, only leaving the last inch of his cock inside him.

Matty digs his fingernails into the hotel sheets.

George slams inside him so hard that the bed frame hits the wall.

Matty shreds them.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” Matty whines as George’s cock goes so deep inside him he thinks he’s going to faint. He’s so full and it hurts so much and it somehow feels so _good_ that it’s like his nerves are pulsing and shuddering and collapsing in on themselves like fucking stars inside him over and over again. Every time he snarls and twists his hips away from the pain, he wants the pressure back so badly that he drives back down in a second. George doesn’t let him go far anyway, grabbing his ribs and slamming his cock into him until Matty’s chest is shaking under his hand.

“God, I can feel that in my _stomach_ ,” Matty chokes out.

“Good,” George grunts, getting his fist in Matty’s hair and slamming his hips into his arse until Matty’s thighs are stinging from their skin slapping together. George is braced on one arm, and Matty is amazed by how _hard_ he’s driving his cock inside him. George is so strong, and he’s _using_ him, using him like he wants to, and the thought makes Matty moan and try to curl in on himself as George’s thrusts rub that thing inside him. George lets go of his hair and wraps his arm around Matty’s torso, pulling their bodies flush together as Matty’s mouth falls open from the pressure.

“God, you really fucking want me,” Matty says, but he can’t get a barb into his voice like he wants to. He sounds ruined, and he gives up and puts his head on the pillow as George pulls his hips up and drives down into his arse.

“Not the one who always gets what I fucking want,” George pants, his hips connecting with Matty’s body so hard that Matty cries out. “You’re on your face on the bed because _you_ wanted it.”

“George-” Matty half-snaps half-gasps, though he doesn’t know what he wants to come out of his mouth next. He’s scared that it’ll just be sounds, as George makes him gasp again and again, that it won’t even sound like protest. And he wants desperately to protest, to mouth-off at George like he always does, because if there’s any time he doesn’t want George to see through him, it’s now, with his cock so deep inside him that shudders are running up and down his thighs. And it’s almost like George feels it coming, and doesn’t want to let it slide, just this _one_ time, because as soon as his name leaves Matty’s mouth his fingers prize it open and slide inside.

“Shut up,” he mutters. “Just once.” He drags his cock almost all the way out of Matty’s body and then slides slowly inside again, making Matty whine as that sweet drag inside him hits him even harder than the first time. “I want to concentrate.”

Matty fists his palms in the sheets again as George changes his angle and pounds into his body. His cock is rubbing hopelessly into the sheets every time George thrusts forward. They’re torn up and wet with his sweat underneath him, and he can feel George’s sweat on his skin. George’s teeth sink into his back over and over again, finding new sensitive spots to abuse like it’s instinct. He licks over the tender skin after each one, and Matty tenses up and struggles, driving the head of his cock into the bed. George pushes his fingers deeper into his mouth, sliding them in and out in time with his thrusts, and Matty whines around them. The nerves inside him are responding to the new angle, and he can feel his orgasm building even as he winces and writhes and cries out from the stretch.

This isn’t something he’s thought about doing with anyone except George, and Matty’d never even thought about doing it with George until a month ago. Or that’s what he says to himself, anyway. In the past there had been flashes of something, large hands, the arch of long shoulder blades on a broad back, teeth glinting through a wide grin, always right before he came when he masturbated, but Matty had shrugged it off. Getting off was getting off, and it could’ve been anybody.

Even later, when he was jerking off with his fingers stabbing into the bruise George had put on his arm, he’d shied away from thinking about getting _fucked_ by him. The thoughts always crept in, snaring Matty for a second before he dragged his mind back to images of George’s chest wet with sweat on stage, or George’s mouth, open and gasping as he threw his head back and thrusted on top of a girl. Mostly, when he was sober and wasn’t horny, he just thought it would hurt.

The last thing he’d thought about was how fucking flushed and defeated and _close_ he’d feel with George pressed against him and stretching him inside. It’d never occurred to him at all, and Matty wonders, not for the first time, if his arrogance and lack of foresight will be the death of him, as George pounds into him, somehow still taking care of him, pulling him apart and giving him what he wants and grounding him and making him feel _so_ fucking _good_ through the pain, just like he always does.

Matty hadn’t realised he could do it like _that_ , with his hands and his mouth and his cock and the way he’s gasping against Matty’s skin. Matty feels something twist in his stomach that he doesn’t want to deal with. He pushes back hard onto George’s cock, and tries to tear the sheets again, but his palms are so damp that he can’t even hold on properly. George moans and shudders, and Matty’s mouth falls open around his fingers as he feels it where their bodies join. He buries his face in the pillow, not wanting George to see him flushing as he feels his own saliva slide down George’s fingers.

He feels dirty and overwhelmed and drugged with pleasure as George slams inside him even harder. Matty doesn’t want to come without George touching his cock almost as much as he _needs_ to come. The thought is so humiliating and _intimate_ as he pushes back onto George’s cock again that he closes his eyes and flushes harder than he ever has in life. George gets both of his hands on his hips, smearing Matty’s saliva on his thigh. Matty tenses up around him, groaning because it hurts and then doing it again anyway, because George curses, and he’s desperate to get him to come first. George leans forward over him, his breath coming out in wet pants on Matty’s neck.

“I want to come in you.” His voice is low and strong, and Matty groans. “Hold still.”

“Alright, yeah, alright,” he breathes, and George’s fingers dig inside his left hip so hard that Matty thinks he feels the skin bruising. He slides his other hand up Matty’s spine and pulls his head up with a fist in his hair, so Matty’s lips are open and panting inches above the pillow.

“Fuck,” George breathes, as his cock pumps deep inside Matty and he loses his rhythm, “ _fuck_.”

Matty feels it when George is about to come. His whole body tightens up, like it does when he’s sitting beside Matty in an interview, and the interviewer says something about Matty that he doesn’t like. And all Matty thinks is a shocked ‘ _Oh, that-_ ’, before George is spilling inside him and the thought is lost as everything about him suddenly comes down to his body flushed and stunned under George, and George curling around him and into him like a shell, pulsing and filling him up with come. It makes Matty’s eyes and lips open wide, shivering through him like the best and _worst_ shock he’s ever felt.   

He lies still as George groans and slowly uncurls himself from around his frame. Matty wonders for a moment, feeling his own breath uneven and wet on his lips, if George is going to just stop. He feels like dying.

“Still not going to ask me?” George murmurs, and Matty groans underneath him, his fingers shaking. He wants to tell George to go fuck himself and shove him off with whatever dignity anyone’s got left after they’ve let their drummer come in their arse. He wants to come with George’s cock inside him _more_.

“Make me come,” he rasps, hanging his head, and George wraps his fist around Matty’s cock. He strokes it four times, and then, as he twists his hand around it one last time, he places an open-mouthed kiss on Matty’s neck. And it’s the drag of George’s tongue on his skin that makes Matty come, spilling all over the sheets with a guttural sound that makes him want to bury his face in the pillow for the next year. George lets the shivers run through his body for a minute, hissing as Matty’s arse pumps around his sensitive cock, and then slowly pulls out.

Matty lies on his face for a while, listening to George breathing beside him. George is silent, his breathing getting deep and slow as he lies on his back with his fingers just brushing Matty’s thigh. Matty’s so tired he wants to pass out with George’s come still inside him, lying in his own mess on the torn up sheets.

“I’m gonna pass out,” he mutters, and he feels George turn on his side to face him.

“With my come in your arse?” George asks, and trails his fingers up the inside of Matty’s spread thighs. He slides one long finger inside Matty’s still-slick arse, and Matty yelps, because he’s too sensitive and too sore for it to be anywhere near comfortable.

“What the fuck, George?” He turns his head and looks at him incredulously, and George just smiles and looks down as he slowly pulls his finger out and rubs the mess on Matty’s thighs. Matty turns over, wincing as he does, and his eyes widen as he feels come drip out of him onto his thighs.

“Oh fucking wonderful, that’s lovely, George, well done,” Matty scowls as he pushes himself up on his elbows and resentfully gets off the bed and walks to the bathroom. He almost falls when he first puts his feet flat on the ground, because there’s a soreness close to his centre of gravity that he’s never had before, and because, if he’s being honest, he’s just come like a desperate teenager who’s never gotten off before.

He wipes himself off as well as he can with a wet flannel, shivering because his skin still feels too hot for the rivulets of cool water running over it. His body smells like a mixture of George’s sweat and his, and Matty shudders as he breathes in. His eyelids are already trying to close, and it crosses his mind through his fatigue that it’s _weird_ to like that smell so much. When he comes back into the room, George has collapsed on his own bed, leaving Matty with the bed that’s covered in come. Matty sighs, turns off the lights, and tries to get his body under the twisted labyrinth of sheets in the dark. He knows he’s going to smell like come in the morning, but he wants to be unconscious more than he cares.

“Come on, don’t sleep in that,” George murmurs, turning over and looking at him through heavy, exhausted eyelids. Matty can see him wrinkle his nose at the soiled sheets in the dark as he holds out a pale hand, and he grudgingly takes it and crawls into George’s bed beside him.

And the worst thing about it isn’t that he let someone fuck him up the arse, or that he let _George_ fuck him up the arse, because that in itself was a pretty poor decision. Matty is mentally hearing every responsible person he knows telling him what a lacking-in-judgement type of thing shagging your closest mate who you also work with is.  

What’s worse is that George still looks _good_ now that they’re finished: now that he’s come. The pale skin on his chest is catching strips of moonlight from the window, and it’s still flushed from fucking. For a moment, Matty wants to put his hand on it. _You were supposed to get all that shit out of your system_ , he tells himself, inhaling slowly as exhaustion starts to take over again. George’s eyes are closed, and his eyelashes look damp where his sweat is still smeared on his cheek. Matty looks away and turns over, and George grunts and lazily wraps an arm around his stomach.

 _Tonight was the last time_ , Matty thinks, and closes his eyes.

 

*

 

Matty stumbles around on stage the next night, hypersensitive and sore, almost tripping over in their set about five times. Ross looks at him and furrows his brow a few times and then shrugs and seems to pass it off as drunkenness, but Matty sees Adam watching him with concern throughout the show, playing closer to him than he normally would. Matty wonders if Adam thinks he’s going to fall. Matty wonders if he’s going to fall too, but he doesn’t want to be still, spinning around the stage and letting the endorphins work him over like a drug as his used muscles scream and sing.

George is into it tonight, his pupils blown even under the bright lights and his wrists arcing through the air as he brings the sticks down on the drums with an intensity that makes their songs _bigger_ somehow. Matty feeds off his energy, moaning and almost screaming into microphone, and the crowd feels it and screams back at them. Their shows are always the best when the two of them are like this. Ross looks happy about it and Matty sees him grin over at George. George gives him an open-mouthed smile back, his head tilted back and the sweat on his neck shining under the spotlight as he catches Matty’s eyes on his.

They’re both panting as they look at each other, the energy and the screams singing in the air between them like a live wire. Matty falls onto his knees as George’s sticks smash into his drums, arching his back and crying out and holding the note as the fans scream for him.

“Is it on again with Gemma?” Ross asks him after show.

“What? No?” Matty says, his chest still heaving from the show as he pulls off his sweaty singlet. “Why?”

Adam nudges Ross and shakes his head slightly as George appears in the doorway, wiping his chest with a towel and looking at Matty. Ross smiles.

“Nothing.”

  
*

 

When they get back to their hotel room later, Matty does fall. George steps forward and wraps an arm around his waist as he stumbles and his legs give out, just stopping him from falling to the floor.

“Idiot,” George says, but it sounds more affectionate and guilty than anything else. “You should’ve told me not to if it was hurting you that much.”

Matty turns around quickly in George’s grip, flushing and wondering if it’s really that obvious: if it’s been that obvious all night. George falters for a second and then puts his hand lightly on Matty’s waist, so that his fingers are just touching Matty's side. It’s like he still wants to hold Matty up but he doesn’t know how much he’s allowed to touch him now. Matty’s had enough tequila to lean sideways, concentrating on that touch.

“Yeah, I bet you’re _so_ sorry,” he says. George rubs his fingers into Matty’s side for a moment and drags his tongue across his teeth.

“Come on, you need to lie down,” he says, guiding Matty towards the bed. George gives him a soft push when they’re in front of the bed and Matty collapses on it. George sits down at the foot of the bed.

“It was good,” Matty tells him, and George looks down at him with an arched brow and an unreadable expression. Matty rolls his eyes. “The fucking _show_ tonight, dickhead.”

“Oh, yeah,” George says. Something in his eyes flickers and his face settles into a vague smile that makes Matty want to read his mind. He’s too drunk to bullshit himself; George looks amazing. His eyes are fever-bright from the gig and even though he’s rinsed the sweat off his skin he’s still flushed from the heat. George leans back and his shoulders flex. _It was the last time_ , Matty thinks. A drunker, louder voice inside him sets its teeth and tells him ‘ _No_ ’.

“Fuck me again.” His voice sounds low and dirty and a little bit slurred, and Matty flushes.

George looks over at him again. His eyes are dark and Matty watches the lump in his throat drag slowly up and down.

“I’m so gonna go for that while you’re so wrecked from last time you’re falling over.”

“Aw,” Matty drawls, leaning forward and digging his boot into George’s crotch until George snarls and wraps his fist around his ankle. “Someone’s full of shit. Not to undermine how amazing you think your dick is, George, but I’m fucking _drunk_.”

“Liar,” George says. His eyes drag over Matty’s body and settle between his thighs. “Let me see.”

Matty’s eyes widen.

“Fuck off!”

“What, you’re shy now?” George sniggers. He turns away from Matty again, lighting a cigarette though they’re not supposed to smoke in their hotel rooms. “You’re tired. Lie down.”

“I’m tired, because I don’t want you to look at my…?” Matty trails off, flushing and wanting to slap himself for suddenly not being able to say it.

“Your what?” George leans closer, his teeth flashing inches away from Matty’s face.

“You’re fucking mental,” Matty murmurs, and he leans in. George’s mouth is slick and wet and full of the lingering taste of smoke. Matty licks it up, and George lets him: lets him put his tongue inside his mouth and his fingers around his neck. He sucks on Matty’s lower lip and strokes his thumb along the side of his mouth, making Matty open wider for him. Matty feels like his nerves are shivering as George’s spit starts to coat his lips, like the energy from the show and the lingering ache from George’s cock inside him shot a couple of volts into his skin and George’s fingers on his shoulder are finding that electricity again. He whines into it, feeling narked at himself for being so needy and letting his fingers find George’s belt anyway.

“Did I fucking stutter, Matty?” George asks breathlessly, pulling away and seizing Matty’s wrist. “Not now.”

Matty flushes.

“Fine, I’ll fucking well do it myself then.”

George’s eyes look a little glazed as he watches Matty twist around to get the lubricant off the nightstand.

“What are you doing?”

Matty gives him a look that says ‘ _What do you think_?’ and sticks his fingers out under the bottle to get them wet. George catches his wrist and drags it up to his lips. Matty’s eyes widen as George slides his fingers inside his mouth and _sucks_.

“What are _you_ doing?” Matty rasps, a shudder running up his spine as George’s tongue slides up the ‘v’ between his fingers. George pulls Matty’s fingers out slowly, looking into his eyes and letting them leave a wet line down his jaw.

“Lie down,” George says, and Matty lets his spine fall down to the bed in spite of himself. George’s fingers slide up his ribs. “Turn on your side.” Matty lets George guide him with the fingers on his ribs so that he’s lying facing away from him on the bed. His spine straightens as he feels George lie down behind him. His fingers feel so wet from George’s mouth that he wants to wrap his fist around his cock, but George strokes up both of his arms and then twists them behind his back. Matty gasps as George lets his cock rub into his saliva on his fingers, wondering if George is going to just fuck him almost dry like this. He wonders how much it would hurt, and if he would still let him.

George wraps five fingers around both of Matty’s wrists, holding them in a loose grip that lets Matty arch back as George pushes into him. George slides one arm over Matty’s body and picks up the bottle of lube from where Matty’s dropped it on the bed.

“Did I ask you to fuck me or admire the view, you pervert?” Matty jibes, but George only pulls his jeans down around the bottom of his thighs.

“Sssshhh,” George says. He puts his cigarette in Matty’s mouth, forcing him to close it and focus on circular breathing to avoid dropping it and burning his chest or the hotel sheets. Sweat beads on his neck as he lets the smoke pour out of his nose and feels George shift behind him. He feels his drummer’s arm flex and realises he’s stroking his cock. George licks the wet nape of his neck and Matty buries his face in the pillow and groans, shuddering as he listens to the wet sounds George is making behind him.

“Like this,” George murmurs, and Matty freezes in his grip as George slides his cock between his closed thighs. Matty’s breath catches and George pulls his cigarette out of his lips so he doesn’t choke on smoke. Matty feels him arch back to put it out, and then George’s stomach is pressing into his spine again and George’s cock is sliding wet between his thighs. It feels so huge and obscene, pushing between his legs while George’s eyelashes brush against his neck, and it’s never even _occurred_ to Matty to fantasise about _this_. He curses as George’s cock slides up and finds his perineum, the slickness on the skin making him shiver and struggle because it’s still so over-sensitised from George fucking him last night.

George adjusts his angle and slowly fucks Matty’s thighs again, his fingers pushing down on Matty’s thigh, forcing them closer together. The skin on Matty’s inner thighs is sensitive and tingling, and George’s breath is starting to come in short gasps that make his cock jump.

“Who would’ve thought your thighs would be this tight?” George says.

Matty moans as he feels George’s cock smear lubricant all over his thighs. He tries to find something derisory to say, but George’s fingers dig deeper into the muscle of his thigh and Matty’s mind almost blanks out.

“Did you think about doing this?” he whispers back, trying to poke at George’s desires. His voice ends up more quiet and vulnerable than he wants to admit. There’s something about this that feels more intimate than anything he’d expected from the first time he looked into George’s eyes and saw something like want flashing back at him. He fists his fingers in George’s grip as his breath stutters out of his lips. “Dry humping me like you’re _fifteen_?”

“Do you want it wetter?” George breathes and Matty almost whines at the loss as George lets go of his thigh. He doesn’t have time to understand the click of the lid opening on the lube before George squeezes the cold gel onto his thighs. He drops it and clamps down on Matty’s thigh again so all he needs to do is lie still and milk the friction on his cock as Matty hisses and struggles at the shock.

“Did I think about still using your tight little body to come when it wasn’t ready to _fuck_? Yeah, sure.” George smirks into his neck while his thrusts speed up in the wet mess between Matty’s thighs. “Why didn’t you want me to look?” Matty feels his smirk widening as he drags his wet lips down the back of his neck. “I bet it’s all pink and swollen.”

Matty arches and gasps.

“I am going to _literally_ hurt you after I come,” Matty tells him, pushing his hips back into George and shuddering when he feels George’s stomach muscles flex.

“What, like my ears by whining all night?” George gets out, but he’s losing his breath and losing his rhythm and the flexing muscles begin to seize up and Matty feels something flutter inside his stomach as George groans into his neck. And the last thing he thinks, drunk and aching with his best mate’s fingers beginning to break the skin on his slick, shivering thigh, is ‘ _Fuck, it is, it’s fucking butterflies, for fuck’s sake_ ’ before George’s come spills over his skin and the bed.

“My fingers,” he rasps, and George lets go of his wrists and wraps one arm around his stomach, his body still pulsing and his cock dripping onto Matty’s thigh.

“I was never holding them so tight you needed to ask,” George smirks breathlessly, and Matty shoves his fist down on his cock and comes. When his breathing slows down he drives his bony elbow deep into George’s stomach. It feels pretty good.

“Ow!” George doubles over and Matty sits up, wincing because sitting still isn’t his body’s favourite thing.

“I told you.” He looks back at George after a minute of leaning back on his arms and letting his body cool down and trying to determine exactly how screwed up he is. George’s long body is stretched out on the bed, his skin bright and glistening a little bit, his cock still thick and shining where it’s beginning to soften on his thigh. Matty wants to elbow him again.

“You should lie down again. I’ll go get something to clean you up.”

Matty looks down at him with complete incredulity.

“Do you think I’m your _fucking_ girlfriend? Seriously, did I miss something?”

George only shrugs.

“Fuck it, _fine_.” Matty forces himself onto his feet and almost wishes he hadn’t as he feels the ache inside him extend over his limbs. “I’m sleeping in your bed.”

Matty’s eyes are already closing as he lies down. He tries to force them open when he feels George’s hands on his legs, looking warily up at him from under his lashes. His eyelids feel like a lead weight, and in the end he gives up, trusting George with his body as he fades in and out of consciousness. George is rubbing something on his thighs, moving him around just enough to wipe away the mess on his skin. And if Matty mumbles something about how the calluses on his fingers feel so good, he won’t remember it in the morning.

“We’re never doing this again,” Matty murmurs as George slots in behind him and presses his chest against his spine.

They do something like it every night for a week.

 

*

 

Ross finds them half-undressed on the kitchen floor when he shows up early for a meeting at George’s. Matty almost sticks his fingers in his zipper trying to get his fly done up and shove George off him at once.

“Classy, guys,” he says, stepping over their bodies and getting a beer out of the fridge. “That’s so classy.”

Matty’s pretty offended that he doesn’t look shocked. George is cursing from where Matty’s shove’s landed him on his tail bone on the tiles. Matty feels like Ross owes it to them to look shocked.

“Don’t fuck in the bunks,” he tells them flatly as he opens his beer and walks out of the kitchen.

They fuck in the bunks at the first opportunity, because fuck Ross. Matty understands for the first time exactly why George bitches about not fitting in them. He needs to almost double over Matty’s body to get a nice angle, his thighs flexing and pressed against Matty’s. Matty stretches his arms back and digs his fingernails into them until George pushes his shoulders down and comes with a shudder that feels like it shifts the bunk.

“I’ve got your skin under my fingernails,” Matty tells George absentmindedly when they’re at a petrol station the next morning, looking at his nails and wondering if there are pink lines on George’s thighs. George looks at him with dark eyes and then pulls him into the toilets without a word.

Matty doesn’t protest until they’re locked alone inside the toilets, because Ross is looking back and forth between them like they’re some sort of fascinating exhibit.

“ _What the fuck is it with you_?” he hisses, shoving him away when George loosens his brutal grip on his arm. His fingers fly to the aching muscle in his forearm and then he looks at George’s eyes.

“George, _no_.”

George slams him face-first into the wall and then runs a finger slowly down his spine. Matty shudders. The pressure of George’s fingertip on his lower back is almost non-existent, and Matty doesn’t understand what’s wrong with him. His nipples harden under his top and his cock fills so quickly it hurts.

“Still no?” George asks softly, waiting for him to answer.

Matty curses and undoes his belt.

There’s nothing to use as lube, so George ruts against him breathlessly, his cock pushing into the cleft of Matty’s arse. _You’re not fucking sixteen_ , Matty tells himself as he wraps an arm around George’s neck behind him, grinding back into the pressure and biting his lip when he feels pre-come drip onto his skin. _You weren’t even doing anything this single-mindedly stupid with sex back then_. George lines him up where he wants him and lets the friction work his cock, his chest pressing against Matty’s shoulders. His fingers drag up Matty’s ribs under his shirt, and then his breath stutters and his grip on Matty’s ribs tightens until Matty almost shoves him off.

“I need them, you fucking idiot.” He wraps his fingers around George’s on his ribs and George groans and comes on his lower back and his arse. Matty shivers and presses back into it in spite of himself.

“Use it,” he breathes, and George’s breath is wet as he nods against his neck. Matty feels him wipe his fingers in his own come and then slide them up between his thighs.

“ _Now_ ,” he tells him as George’s fingers circle his arse, and the drummer bites his neck and forces them inside. It’s not-quite-wet-enough and it hurts, but Matty still comes within fifty seconds, his cock in his fist and his chest slamming into the wall from the mind-blowing pressure of George’s thick fingers rubbing his nerves. He puts his forehead on the cold wall, gasping for breath. George strokes his ribs for a moment and then pulls his fingers out.

“I like your top,” George smirks, tugging at the front of his pink top and rubbing his thumb over Matty’s stomach muscles while they tighten rhythmically. He leaves Matty leaning on the tiles and shuddering.

Matty tries to hold his frame straight when he walks out of the toilets, but there’s an ache inside him that makes him arch over his stomach. Ross is leaning over the counter flirting with the cashier and Adam is holding a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and looking disapproving of all of them. Matty walks into the toiletries aisle and finds a little girl in front of him, holding a doll with a dress the pale pink colour of his top. George appears behind him, and the girl looks up at them with wide eyes.

“You’re pretty,” she informs him.

“Oh, that’s very sweet,” Matty gets out through gritted teeth, clutching his ribs.

George leers, and Matty gives him the finger behind his back. He forces a smile until the girl turns away and then shoves a bottle of lube from the shelf beside him into George’s chest with unnecessary force and walks out.

“Fuck you,” Matty tells George firmly when they’re driving again.

“Not now,” George says, looking out of the window with an airy smile.

Adam sighs loudly.

Matty looks down at his forearm every couple of minutes while they drive. He wonders when it’s going to bruise.

 

*

 

George likes to corner him in strange places. His skill at finding Matty alone in them is something which both astonishes Matty and gets under his skin beyond belief. George fucks him in Ross’s basement one night, Matty chewing his lip as he whines on George’s cock, desperately trying not to wake up Ross’s girlfriend, because it’s bad enough that Ross’s walked in on them four times over the past month. For the first time, Matty feels weird about it. He’s always had a bit of intimacy with George that he’s never minded the others poking fun at before: sleeping at each other’s apartments even when it wasn’t really necessary and finishing each other’s sentences and one understanding the other by looking at their eyes.

It’s sort of different now, he thinks as George fucks him on his back in some park they’ve stumbled into drunk and high. They’re sleeping in some truck stop town which is on the road from their last show to their next one, and Matty’s gripping George’s shoulder with one hand and his spine with the other as his drummer thrusts on top of him and mumbles something about how good he feels inside. Matty’s looking up at the stars over George’s shoulder, avoiding his eyes, but George isn’t looking at him anyway. Last time Matty’s eyes flickered over to him, George’s eyes were closed, his lips wet as he groaned and buried his face in Matty’s neck. George’s spine feels damp under his shirt, and Matty’s thighs are aching from being pushed back, but they’re both stoned and Matty feels like the sex could go on forever. He wonders whether or not he’d mind.

“Someone’s going to find us doing this if you don’t fucking _finish_ ,” Matty whispers, sliding his fingers under George’s t-shirt and dragging them fiercely down his spine. George arches into it and curses.

“Are you close?” he breathes, and Matty nods and shivers as George drags the sensitive skin on his neck between his teeth.

“It’s fucking cold out here.” Matty’s body won’t stop shivering with something like panic as he looks up at the stars. He thinks his pupils must be blown, and he feels like he’s seeing more stars than he should be. He’s pretty fucking high, and paranoia is trickling under his skin. He digs his fingernails deeper into his drummer’s back, feeling like George is the only thing grounding him.

“You’re sweating…” George murmurs.

“ _Shit_ ,” Matty whispers as George slides deeper inside him. “Your fingers.”

“Yeah, alright,” George breathes, bracing himself on one arm and working his fingers in between their bodies. He wraps them tightly around Matty’s cock and pulls him off with quick strokes until Matty’s gasping and coming. George’s body seizes up above him and he feels George’s come wet inside him as his muscles jerk under the stars. They’ve never come at exactly the same time before, and Matty’s eyes open wide as his orgasm drives into his nerves like a sledgehammer. George slumps on his body for a while and then pulls out, and Matty wraps his grey jacket tighter around his frame as he’s left to wait for George’s come to drip out from inside him.

He feels amazing and disgusting and cold and on edge all at once.

George is sitting on the grass beside him, smoking a cigarette and staring at the stars when Matty sits up. When he sees that Matty’s ready to go he stops leaning on his knees and drags himself to his feet. He walks ahead of Matty for a little while, and then turns around.

“Are you alright?” he asks, looking at Matty’s eyes.

And that’s part of what’s different now, Matty thinks. He doesn’t understand what George is thinking as he looks back at his eyes.  It’s like George’s eyes are clouded sometimes.

“I told you, I’m fucking cold, you dick,” Matty tells him, and George grins and drapes an arm around his shoulder.

“I’m going to sleep for twelve hours,” George says. That opaque look in his dark eyes is gone, but when Matty drags himself into his bunk he has a weird dream that he’s going blind.

 

*


	2. Landslide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part is a bit different to the first one and probably to the others. There ended up being more words than I'd intended in it, and definitely more words than worked for it, so I'm doing another part before the last one, with some of the sex I wrote for this one (sorry). Next part will be pretty much wall-to-wall fucking, I promise.

Matty is subdued for a while after that night they fuck at the park. George doesn’t think anything of it at first. He figures Matty is always the first one to get homesick, and they’ve all been drinking a bit too much to be completely with it anyway. George shrugs it off and tries to give him enough space, even if sometimes something itches under his skin when he looks at him. He feels it when Matty’s forced to shoulder past him in a dark, narrow corridor at the back of a venue and his pulse thuds dully where Matty’s skin was. He feels it when his eyes follow a droplet of sweat dripping down the bottom of Matty’s spine, glittering under the stage lights, and the movements of his fingers on his sticks feel too slow for a second, like his muscles won’t work until that wet trail disappears inside Matty’s tight black jeans.

George finds himself running his fingernails down his arm while he’s on the bus, looking at the soft, pale skin of Matty’s thigh poking out through a rip in his jeans. Matty sees him looking and rolls his eyes at him, so George slinks into the bunks and pumps his fist up and down his cock until that itch inside him feels less intense. George wonders why Matty doesn’t seem interested in fucking around lately, but as he wipes the sticky mess off his stomach he thinks it’s probably a good thing.

He doesn’t work out that there’s something seriously wrong with Matty until the night he feels him stiffen beside him when they’re meeting fans after a show. George is leaning down to peck a bright-eyed, freezing-looking girl on the cheek, smiling and listening to Matty’s voice beside him. The girl’s skin is pink from the cold and her tits look amazing as George leans over her, so he presses his lips just into the corner of her mouth. Matty’s body goes rigid beside him, and George quickly pulls back, thinking that someone’s latched onto Matty’s wrist or something. Matty’s so slight that he sometimes freezes up when the odd fan tries to force her way into his personal space, and George is instinctively lifting his arm to pull him away, but when he looks up Matty is just signing a t-shirt, his shoulders stiff and shivering slightly under his singlet.

“I wish you wouldn’t fucking do that,” Matty mutters when they’re back inside the bus.

“What?” George asks, letting his eyes slide over a bruise he left on Matty’s arm a couple of weeks ago. He remembers Matty arching under him, his arms struggling when George  pinned them to his sides and his lips flushed and panting as he turned his head on the pillow. Matty follows his eyes, and George watches his lips part before he covers his arm with his fingers and scowls.

“If you kiss one fan I’ve got to deal with all the girls there looking at me like I’m a cold-hearted prick because I don’t want to kiss every fucking person out there.”

George puts down the joint he’s almost finished rolling and looks at him. Matty is pretty tricky to deal with after months on tour, but he’s never had a go at George for being affectionate with fans.

“Do you seriously want me to apologise for kissing a girl with nice tits who stood in the cold for two hours to see us?”

“I seriously want you to apologise for putting me out tonight because you lose control of yourself every time you look at a pair of _tits_ ,” Matty says, and George licks the paper and glares at him. They sit in silence until Matty mutters, “She wasn’t even that pretty,” and George looks up at him.

“I’ve fucked less pretty girls,” he murmurs, leaning forward and offering Matty the joint. Matty looks torn, but the weed wins out and he leans forward and extends his fingers. George twitches at the shock of static electricity when their fingers brush, and then wraps his fingers around Matty’s wrist. Matty shivers as George’s thumb rubs the vein in his wrist, so George leans closer.

“I fucked you, didn’t I?” he grins. He’s expecting a litany of curses, or at least an unimpressed eye roll and some lip. What George doesn’t expect is for Matty to go completely still.

“ _Let go_.” Matty’s voice is so low that George drops his wrist. Matty slowly leans back, his eyes dark as his wrist settles in his lap.

“You need to loosen up,” George mutters, running his hand through his hair in frustration as he looks over Matty’s body and feels pent-up desire slide over his nerves. He realises the double entendre in his words when they’ve left his mouth. Normally he would just smirk, but something about Matty’s posture makes a dull flush spread over his cheeks. George doesn’t like the way that Matty’s curled in on himself, his slender limbs wound closely around themselves with his knees pressed against his chest. Matty looks cornered and George can’t for the life of him understand why.

“Just give me the fucking joint,” Matty spits, and George rolls his eyes and sighs as he passes it over. They sit in silence while they pass it back and forth. It’s not the easy, still silence they sometimes share while they smoke; it’s strung out and tight, and George finds himself rolling his shoulders trying to unsettle it. He listens to the crack of his joints breaking the silence and looks at Matty’s lips, pink and slightly chapped where they’re wrapped around the joint. Matty’s sucking the smoke in deep, making his chest work slowly up and down, and George wants to put his fingers on his ribs and feel it.

The nervous energy pouring off Matty’s body is so strong it’s sending goose bumps up George’s spine, and it feels off, for Matty to be bursting at the seams with something and _not_ try to express it to him. George waits silently for Matty to vent, all wide eyes and wide gestures: to force whatever’s inside his head out until George understands it too. The outpour never comes, and when they’ve finished the joint and walked into the bunks, George feels oddly dizzy.

“Goodnight,” Matty mutters, and George glances over his shoulder to find him stiffly pulling off his singlet and climbing into his bunk.

“Yeah,” George sighs. “Goodnight, Matty.”

When George lies down he still feels dizzy. It’s not from the weed.

 

*

 

The next night their show is one of the worst ones they’ve played for a while. George brings his sticks down too slowly, and Matty misses his opening for verses multiple times. George’s arms feel clumsy as he listens to Matty skip whole lines because he’s come in too late with his vocal, or slow down just as everyone else skips forward because he’s gone in too early. Their lack of synchronicity is throwing off everyone else in the band, and the crowd is pretty subdued.

Matty shouts at George over it when they’ve finished up and they’re packing up their stuff backstage.

Ross raises his eyebrows pointedly at the ceiling and sucks on his beer, Adam mutters “Calm down,” and John sympathetically brushes his shoulder against George’s, but the general consensus seems to be that George is going to deal with it.

George listens to Matty’s voice and hears that wince inside it that Matty gets when he’s more upset with himself than anyone else, so he doesn’t say anything.

 

*

 

Adam steps in a couple of shows later. George and Matty are still out of sync with one another, and Matty decides to mess with their set list without warning anyone first. They’re mid-set when he steps up to the mic and tells the crowd they’re going to play some track from five years ago that George barely remembers. He’s expecting to take it slow while they play ‘fallingforyou’, and he struggles through the old song, trying to find the beat while Matty powers through the lyrics without looking at anyone. John looks sort of serenely fascinated by the trainwreck unfolding in front of him, but Adam and Ross are as annoyed as George is, judging by the look Adam is shooting into the back of Matty’s head and the fact that Ross’s bassline is the musical equivalent of that loud, angry hum you do in elementary school when you’re sick of listening to someone.

“Would you like,” Adam asks Matty coolly when they’re in their dressing room, “to let the rest of us know when you change _our_ set?”

“No,” Matty says without looking up from his phone, “but it’s so nice of you to ask me.”

Adam rolls his eyes and gives him a disillusioned-older-sibling look.

“You handle him,” he mutters to George, and exits the room with Ross in tow.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Matty yells after him, but Adam ignores him. George listens to Adam and Ross’s footsteps echoing down the corridor and wishes that he was unconscious and not dealing with this. He turns to John with a tired, sheepish grin, trying to convey something like ‘sorry mate, we’re not always like this’, but John is looking down at Matty.

“Why didn’t you want to play ‘fallingforyou’?” John asks softly. There’s an intent look in his eyes and George looks at him in surprise, because it’s not something he would’ve thought of.

“I didn’t fucking feel like it,” Matty snaps, putting his phone down and looking up at him with a truculent expression that makes his face look irritatingly pretty.

John shrugs one shoulder, nods and walks out, not looking offended or intimidated in the slightest. Matty sighs and pushes himself up from his chair to follow him.

“Matty…” George says slowly, and Matty turns to him.

“What, do you wanna have a go as well?”

George lifts his fingers to the back of his neck and flexes them in exasperation.

 “No, for fuck’s sake, Matty, no one’s having a go at you.”

“What then?” Matty asks, stepping forward and looking George dead in the eye. George’s legs bring him closer to Matty without him thinking about it, and his pulse feels stronger, _louder_ in his wrist as he gets closer to Matty’s skin. He steps forward again and Matty steps back, pressing his spine into the wall. George puts his fingers on the cold wall and looks down at Matty’s face.

“ _What_ , George?” Matty meets his eyes, his lips parting just slightly, just enough that George flushes in frustration as he forgets what he’d meant to say. Matty’s body is arching towards him, his narrow hips arching off the wall like George’s fingers are gripping them, pulling them into him. Matty leans his head back against the wall, looking up at George with his hair falling over one eye.

“Matty…” George breathes, and Matty arches his neck until his hair falls away from his eyes.

“I’m listening,” Matty tells him pointedly, and there’s a narky edge to his voice as his ribs pull off the wall like someone’s pulling a wire inside him. “Fucking _what_?” His lips curl in a smirk. “Do you want to ‘handle’me, George?” Matty’s dark eyes flash on his, and there’s something inside them, deep under the mocking, challenging look, that’s tense and tied up and not quite right.

“I want,” George says slowly, pressing his thumb into Matty’s exposed hipbone, “to know what’s going on with you lately.”

Matty rolls his eyes, pushing his hips forward so that George’s fingernail sinks deeper into his skin. The line of his lips is derisive as his eyes flicker from George’s fingers to George’s pulse, moving quickly in his neck.

“We’re living in a fucking _bus_ , you know what’s bloody going on with me.”

“Yeah, you’re being weird about pretty much everything and it’s freaking everyone else out, so if you could not, that would be great, Matty.”

“I’m weird because I like to sing a different fucking song sometimes and didn’t laugh at your _stupid_ joke the other night, well forgive me.” Matty’s voice is thick with sarcasm, but as George lets his fingers settle beside his thumb the muscles under Matty’s skin feel locked up, like they do when he’s not ready for George inside him yet, locking down all over his slender frame, letting George know he needs to pull back, rub along his prostate slower, or get the muscle inside him slicker, or give him another finger first.

“Why are you so fucking uptight at the moment?” he murmurs, but it sounds more insulting than he’d intended it. “Do you need to _fuck_? No one’s stopping you.”

“You mean do I need it from _you_? Fuck off,” Matty scoffs, and George scowls.

“No, I mean _girls_ , Matty, you idiot. It’s not fine to go off at me and Hann because you’ve forgotten to get your dick wet.” Matty’s giving him an absolutely poisonous look, but he’s still pressing into George’s fingers. George flattens them over his stomach, and then frowns, because Matty’s _cold_. Matty’s skinny enough that he’s sometimes shivering under a coat when George just needs to throw on an open jacket, but his skin feels different now from the cold press of Matty’s nose on his neck when he whines with cold and burrows his face into him. Matty’s flesh is cold and almost wet, only beginning to pick up a tiny bit of heat where his pulse is beating under George’s fingers. George realises he’s been a bit under the weather himself lately, sniffling over his drumsticks and climbing into bed early, and he looks at Matty’s frail frame and panics.

“You’re fucking _clammy_ ,” he tells him, looking into his eyes and then sliding his fingers over his damp stomach to illustrate his point. “Are you sick?”

“Nobody asked you to touch me,” Matty mutters, trying to wriggle out from under his fingers, but George wraps them around his wrist and pins him to the wall.

“I’m being fucking serious, Matty,” he tells him with an exasperated gesture, “we don’t need you dying on tour from a fever because you’re too fucking broody to take some flu meds!”

“ _‘We’_ ,” Matty shoves him off with a look so withering that George lets go of him, “need me to feel like dealing with you in front of thousands of people every night, because I’m the one they come to see, so if it’s fine by you, George, I’d like to be fucking left alone.”

George needs to force himself not step backwards when Matty shoulders past him and walks out of the room. He lets himself be still for a couple of minutes longer, looking at the faint shine Matty’s hair’s left on the white wall.

George lies alone in his bunk that night, wondering about Matty’s body temperature. He jerks off, slowly, because Matty’s smell is all over him. He comes with his fingers lying loosely over his lips, breathing in the lingering smell of Matty’s damp skin, but his orgasm is more of a quiet shudder that ends below his ribs than anything mind-blowing. When it’s over he’s still thinking about the other night, when Matty went off over him kissing some girl, about Matty wearing a singlet out in the cold, sweat glistening on his shoulder even though he was shivering, and the gluey heat of his wrist in George’s fingers inside the bus, which George hadn’t thought anything of, at the time.

He hears Matty fall out of his bunk and sighs, forcing a last pulse of energy into his muscles as he pulls himself up to deal with him. Matty leans on him when George helps him off the floor, disoriented and drooping with sleep, but still practically weightless in George’s grip.

“You need to quit this sleepwalking shit,” George murmurs, trying to guide Matty into his own bed while the singer stumbles into him. “You’re useless.” George doesn’t understand why Matty’s unconscious body’s decided to climb out of his bunk and crumple on the floor for the last few nights, but he needs a rest.

“I found you.” Matty’s voice is whispery, his eyes pressed shut as he turns his face unconsciously into George’s chest.

“You found the floor,” George mutters back, gritting his teeth a little when his body starts to respond to the feeling of Matty undressed and pliant and pushing into him, his lips wet and slack on George’s skin. Matty mumbles something and arches slightly when George manages to slide him into his bunk, and George pats his hair awkwardly and says, “Don’t fucking fall out of bed again.”

When he’s back in his own bunk, lying still and looking up at the darkness, George thinks, ‘ _I wasn’t fucking lost._ ’

 

*

 

The next morning George is smoking a bowl and messing around with some songs on his laptop when Matty quietly sits down beside him.

“Mate, last night…” Matty starts slowly, trailing off when George doesn’t look up. George drums up Matty’s words in his memory and still feels oddly stung. He doesn’t offer him the bowl, and Matty sighs.

“I was out of line. I mean, there was some girl outside last night telling her mates she was personally affronted that you didn’t get your shirt off, for one thing. So there’s that, like, let alone everyone who comes for your production and your drumming. Comes _over_ your production…,” Matty’s joke is thin and forlorn, and George relents and looks up at him.

“That’s not really the point, Matty.” Matty looks into his eyes with that open look he gets when he genuinely wants to listen to something and understand it, leaning forward like he’s willing George to go on, so George does. “We wouldn’t be us without Ross, or Hann, _or_ me, not just you. I mean, obviously we wouldn’t be us without you,” George adds stupidly, mumbling and rubbing his neck because Matty’s still looking at him with that earnest look, wide-eyed and intense, like what George is telling him is the most fascinating thing in the world. Matty gives him a genuine smile and George shrugs his shoulder slightly and goes back to idly messing with settings on the song.

“I brought you coffee,” Matty says, slowly holding out a Styrofoam cup for George instead of silently thrusting it in his direction like he normally would in the morning. Matty’s fingers are resting on the seat beside George, his pinkie finger agitatedly rubbing up and down on George’s thigh, and George rubs his knuckles over his lips to hide his smile, because he doesn’t know if Matty’s even aware that he’s doing it, and because it feels _nice_ : Matty by his side, letting George absorb his restless energy, inserting himself into George’s personal space like he belongs there. It feels like them.

“Good,” George says, and he rubs Matty’s fingers a little when their hands brush on the coffee cup. He hums along to the track he’s working with on his laptop, and pretends he doesn’t notice Matty looking at him from the corner of his eye until Matty gives up on trying to be quiet and blurts out a suggestion. Then they’re talking, passing ideas back and forth, and Matty is nodding and raising his eyebrows and flexing his thin fingers in wide, expressive gestures until he almost spills his coffee on himself. George settles into the sound of Matty’s voice and the familiar feeling of building something with him, and for a moment, it’s like a mild high.

Their conversation only ends when George strokes his fingers down Matty’s calf for a moment without really thinking about it. Matty doesn’t say no, and he doesn’t stiffen up, he just get _stiller_ for a second, and then gets up and walks to the door, mumbling something about finding John, for something.

“Yeah,” George says unnecessarily, because it’s not like Matty asked for his permission to go, but Matty stops by the door and bites his lip.

“Do you want another coffee?” he asks, looking back at George. “When I come back.”

“Yeah,” George says again, giving Matty a relieved grin in spite of himself. “Yeah, I’d love one, mate.”

Their show that night isn’t brilliant, but it’s not useless either. 

 

*

 

George figures they’re fine, for a night. When he finds Matty frowning over his laptop the next day, his shoulders locked in a position that George sees is fucking them up from four feet away, he instinctively walks over and rubs his fingers into Matty’s spine, loosening him up until his shoulders fix themselves, like he’s used to doing.

“ _Don’t_.” Matty’s voice is on edge, and that does it, shoves George over the brink of some new boundary between them that he’s been trying not to think about for weeks.

“Don’t? Don’t touch your fucking shoulder?”

Matty puts his mug down loudly and looks up at him.

“Are you fucking dense?”

“Because I’m the one with a problem,” George mutters, and he smacks his wrist on the side of the door when he walks out, because he’s so frustrated that he doesn’t really see where he’s going.

Adam looks him up and down in the kitchen later and says, “So. What’s going on with Matty?”

“I don’t fucking know,” George mutters without looking up from the sink, “he’s fucking losing it.”

Adam sighs.

“He’s not losing it, he’s-” George turns around and looks up at him so quickly that his neck hurts for a second, and Adam looks at his face and stops.

“What?” George asks. His pulse is racing and his throat suddenly feels sweaty. Adam looks at his eyes for a moment and then shakes his head, as if to himself.

“Nothing.”

Adam walks out of the kitchen and George is left there with his chest thumping and dishwater dripping from his fingers, wondering what the hell just happened to him.

 

*

 

“George.”

Adam’s voice wakes him up, but George doesn’t want to expose that so he lies where he is, despite the fact that he’s somehow gotten himself face down on the pillow and his nose is unpleasantly squashed.

“ _George._ ” Adam’s voice is firm and George relents and turns his head to the side, opening his eyes and then screwing them shut again and grimacing as the light needles into them.

“What, Hann, what fucking time is it?”

“You need to come and hug Matty,” Adam says flatly, “I think he’s hypothermic or something.”

“I am _not_ going to do that,” George says, and turns on his other side so he’s facing the wall.

 “He’s just sitting on the sofa under three blankets shivering.”

“It’s fucking mild outside,” George says, but behind his eyelids he sees Matty’s skinny ribs stuttering up and down with cold. He opens his eyes.

“I brought him coffee but his fingers are shaking so badly he spilled it on himself. John got him to do deep breathing and held a joint up to his lips but he’s still just mumbling that he’s freezing.”

“Why is this my responsibility?” George mutters as he gets out of his bunk and pulls on a shirt, but when he follows Adam through the door to the lounge and sees Matty, he forgets about his mood in a single breath.

Matty is sitting on the sofa with John beside him, his eyes looking straight ahead and his thin frame shivering like it’s snowing just on him. He’s leaning into John, who’s got his arm around his shoulder, but his arms are crossed over his chest, gripping his collar bones and trembling so violently that the blankets pulled up to his neck slip down to his waist over and over, while John patiently pulls them up and whispers something in his ear in a soothing voice. Matty is trying to nod, but it doesn’t look like he’s listening, wide-eyed and clinging to himself with his hair messy and shivering along with him. His leg is thrown over John’s thigh, like he wants to climb into his lap, and George understands why, given the sound of his teeth smacking together uncontrollably is audible five feet away. He finds himself in front of Matty in two seconds flat, his fingers itching to be on his skin until he’s fine.

“Hey, it’s George,” John tells Matty quietly, and when Matty looks up at him, his eyes look large and dark and focused for a second.

“G-george,” he stutters out, and then tries to clench his teeth, looking narked at himself for stuttering. George sits down beside him and Matty lets go of John so quickly he almost jostles him, wrapping his arms around George’s chest as George makes room for him.

“I’ll look after him, mate,” George murmurs, and John smiles and moves over, stretching and then sliding himself up from the seat. George rubs his hand up and down Matty’s spine and curls his other arm tightly around his shoulders. Matty shivers in his arms and contorts himself into the foetal position, fitting into George’s side and burrowing his face into his chest. His skin feels like ice, and when George runs his fingers through his hair he almost whimpers.

“You idiot,” George tells him, nuzzling into his hair a bit. “What did you fucking do?”

“I didn’t _do_ anything,” Matty whines into his skin, his teeth chattering a little less than before, “my body wants me to die, apparently.”

“Did you take anything?” George asks him quietly, and Matty shakes his head without looking up.

“Nothing,” he insists, and then he whispers so quietly that no one but George is able to hear, “I promise.”

George nods and then rests his head on top of Matty’s, feeling Matty’s fingers lose some of their cold on his chest. His eyes sweep over the room idly for a moment as he thumbs at the base of Matty’s spine, and George realises that he’d forgotten Adam and John were there. John is leaning on a door frame, his thumbs resting just under the band of his jeans and a smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he looks down at them. Adam still looks concerned, his body language slowly unwinding as Matty’s shivers become more sporadic. George understands that they just want to make sure that Matty’s alright, but he instinctively draws him closer, knowing he won’t want to be stared at while he’s like this.

“Guys, do you mind…” George gestures vaguely, not wanting to be rude, but John nods and wanders off into the kitchen. Adam raises his eyebrows and smiles, inclining his head towards Matty before he walks back to his bunk. George looks down at Matty and frowns, wondering what that’s meant to mean. Matty’s stopped shivering and his knees are even emitting a tiny bit of warmth where they’re pressed together and folded near George’s belly.

“You alright?” George asks, rubbing along Matty’s arms and finding them not so cold anymore.

“Mmm,” Matty hums against his chest, and then he looks up at George. His eyes flicker back and forth on George’s, like he’s looking for something. “I think I just…lost my equilibrium.” His voice is quiet and slightly hoarse, like it gets when George tells him to ask for it, when he’s flat on his stomach with his wrists pinned behind his back, twitching in George’s fingers: when he’s done struggling and cursing him out and sounds almost shocked that he’s doing what George is telling him to, using that thousand-dollar voice to whisper ‘ _fuck me, fuck me in the arse, come in me, use me_ ’.

“Yeah,” George breathes, and Matty settles into him again, his eyelashes butterflying over George’s collarbone. George is surprised by how quickly the cold is leaving him, the goose bumps on the part of his shoulder exposed by his loose top turning into smooth skin where his shoulder’s pressed into George’s chest. The back of his neck is exposed too, and George rubs his fingers along it, feeling his own pulse slowly pick up as a flush goes up Matty’s neck under his fingers. Matty’s skin there is sensitive, and to George it suddenly feels fine, flushed and musky-smelling and anything but cold. Matty lets out a little gasp, tilting back into it almost involuntarily, so his lips are close to George’s.

They both start when Ross throws open the door to the bus. It bangs loudly against the wall and they turn around to see him coming through the doorway with a box of pizza in the palm of one hand.

“Matty, I’ve got pizza, mate! You don’t want to die without shoving more pizza into your face!” Ross’s voice is so loud that Matty flinches, and George guesses he was having trouble understanding what the others were telling him when he was shivering.

“Ross, I’m fine, please stop _yelling_ ,” Matty moans, putting his hand over his face. Ross looks at the two of them and makes a relieved sound.

“Oh thank God. For a minute there I thought it was like a sex thing and George was gonna need to bum you on the sofa or something.”

George stares at him and Matty musters the energy to flip him off.

“Your blankets are on the floor, you idiots,” Ross adds, walking over and picking the blankets up in one large hand. George realises what Adam was nodding and raising his eyebrows at earlier and makes an airy gesture, running his hand through his hair and suddenly feeling a bit flushed.

“Oh, yeah,” he says.

Ross shakes his head and deposits the blankets on them unceremoniously.

“You’re hopeless. I’m eating this now.”

“You’re a dick, and I want some of that!” Matty calls out as Ross walks into the kitchen, and then they’re alone. George’s lips feel dry as Matty looks up at him. He licks them, rubbing his wrist on his neck and looking slightly to the left of Matty’s gaze. His relief that Matty’s alright is fading into something more restless as he feels Matty’s fingers still pressing into his chest through the fabric of his shirt. The side of Matty’s bony knee pressing into his skin is somehow leaving him feeling like someone’s grabbed his dick, and he shifts on the sofa and tries not to think about Matty tight around him, his breathing whispery and shattered in his ear.

Their bodies are warm under the blankets now, and it’s awkward, because they don’t need them anymore, but George doesn’t want to take them off. He wants Matty’s fingers on his fly, pulling him out and pumping his cock, Matty’s face screwed up and intense like it gets while his fingers are working it up and down, when he’s too tired and sore to fuck and he lets George drag him almost into his lap to get him off like that, like he wants to concentrate, because he knows George won’t relent and slide his hand between his thighs until he’s licking George’s come off his fingers.

George’s fingers twitch at the memories and his cock stirs in his pants. Matty’s thigh is jiggling against his side, and he looks flushed and agitated. A couple of weeks ago, George would’ve taken his wrist and pulled his hand where he needed it, but just now he has no idea how Matty would react, and that’s making him more uncomfortable than his cock thickening under a thin layer of cotton. He feels so conscious of the fact that Matty’s going to move and feel it that he finds himself looking for something to distract him with. 

“Ross probably isn’t fucking around about eating your pizza,” he says, and Matty nods quickly and disentangles himself from him.

“I love you, mate,” he mumbles, looking down at George’s hands for a moment, and then he hurries off into the kitchen, affectionately calling out, “Ross, you fucker!”

George rolls his eyes back in his head and groans, his cock stiff under the blankets.

 

*

 

Matty pretends that nothing happened. He’s moody, he has a sarcastic comment for every sentence that anyone says to him, and he’s sullen and uncommunicative in interviews, leaving George to make futile attempts at finding enough words for both of them. He stiffens whenever George comes within four feet of him, and George is fed up. He tries not to be short with everyone else because of it, but he’s not great with words when he _does_ feel like he can concentrate, and his interactions with the rest of the band get monosyllabic in the space of days. They mostly leave him to his own devices, but George thinks it’s useless, trying to get anything done without Matty.

He finds himself looking listlessly at his laptop, drumming his fingers on its sleek surface and thinking about the bruises on Matty’s skin. The singer’s been falling out of his bunk every other night, landing on his shoulders and his legs and his side, until the blue and purple imprints on his skin look like dark flowers opening out over bones. When they’re getting changed, George looks at them, at the way they climb up and down Matty’s ribs. He wants to lay Matty down, worn-out and fucked-out on his bed, and look at them, rub his fingers over them and see if Matty will still arch into it, just a tiny bit, as his eyes close.

 _We’re not doing that anymore_ , he tells himself, and tries to think of things to say in interviews instead.

He finds himself looking for _his_ bruises on Matty’s skin, even though he knows they’ve faded now. He finds himself missing them.

 _You need to get laid_ , he tells himself, and he flirts with one of their roadies for a couple of nights, until she flat-out looks him up and down and asks if he wants to fuck one night when they’re parting ways. They end up pressed against a concrete wall around the back of the venue, George’s hand up her skirt while he supports her with one arm and tries not to let her scrape her back too much. It feels good, when his fingers get slick, when he replaces them with his cock, when he listens to her breath hitch in time with his thrusts and feels her fingernails on the back of his neck. It feels good, but it’s over quick, and he’s distracted, something nagging at the corner of his mind. George fumbles with his fingers after he’s finished, because she hasn’t come, but she laughs and says it’s fine, adjusting the laces on her boots and smiling while he tries to find a bin for the condom.

When he slinks back onto the bus, not sure if anyone else will still be up, Matty is on the sofa with a book open in his lap. He looks up at George when he steps inside, breathes in, like he’s going to say something, and then he stops. He looks shocked.

“What?” George asks, running his hand through his hair.

Matty looks down at his book and then back up again, blinking at George through his hair.

“You smell good,” he tells George. “You smell like girls.”

The comment doesn’t seem like anything more than Matty telling him whatever comes into his head, without thinking about it, figuring George will understand, like he’s done for years. And just for a second, George thinks about saying something stupid like ‘ _Do you mind_?’ He blinks off the feeling and narrows his eyes. Matty’s had something insulting to add to every innocuous comment he’s made for the last week, and George doesn’t feel like dealing with it tonight.

“Whatever, Matty,” he mutters, and walks into the bunks.

He’s woken up by a weight pushing down on top of him in the dark.

“What the fuck?” he mumbles, but then he feels Matty’s fingernails rake up his sides and goes still, just suppressing a shudder as he feels Matty’s breath on his chest.

“Are you fucking _serious_?” he murmurs in the dark, lying still and sounding more interested than he wants to as Matty’s fingers slide over the front of his sleep pants.

“ _Please_.” Matty twitches on top of him, arching his back so his belly and his erection slide along George’s cock. “Give me...” Whatever he wants to ask for is swallowed by a choked, moaning sound in the back of his throat as he kneads George’s thighs.

“Jesus, you want it _now_?” George hisses as his cock swells, but he’s already helping Matty in spite of himself, guiding his fingers inside his pants and letting him pull it out. Matty’s fingers twitch on his cock and George does shudder then, his cock twitching back, uselessly, because Matty just stills, poised above him with his fingers closed around George’s erection, pressing into it softly.

“Fuck, Matty,” George breathes, thrusting up a little in frustration, “gonna touch it, or do you just wanna look at it so you can wank later?”

“I-I…” Matty stutters out, his mouth falling open slightly, glistening wet in the darkness that covers most of his face. George wants to slide his fingers inside it until Matty’s eyelashes get droopy from focusing on trying not to gag. When he’s alone at night, his thumb stroking up and down his cock, he finds himself thinking about the look Matty gets in his eyes when George’s fingers fuck in and out of his mouth until his drool wets his chin: the desperate, too-full look when he flushes and tries to look away. It always gets the head of George’s cock wet under his thumb, wondering if it’s just humiliation or something else, something shivery and _ready_ in Matty’s eyes, in case George gives him what he wants and sticks his fingers inside him like that, dry except for the slickness from his own saliva.

Matty had only asked for that once out-loud, flushed and looking almost annoyed as George gazed back at him with his eyebrows raised, pretending his cock didn’t somehow feel heavier between his thighs with Matty’s words swelling in the air between them. 

“ _What_?” Matty had asked, mouth still wet and smeared where George had shoved him forward on the bed, looking over his shoulder and letting his dark eyes settle lazily on George’s fingers. “Forget what they’re for?”

He’d only asked that one time, but it wasn’t lost on George: the way that Matty’s thighs always spread as George’s fingers slipped out of his mouth, stretching obscenely, uselessly wide as he leaned back with his lashes heavy. It wasn’t lost on his _cock_ that Matty looked fucking wrecked whenever he twisted his fingers inside him like that, writhing and almost screaming as George’s fingers rubbed the barely-there slickness into his prostate, arching and spilling come all over his own ribs. George still thinks about Matty shivering and not managing to form words, come running down his chest while George slowly ground out an orgasm between his thighs.

When they were fucking around most nights, he’d only ever given Matty his fingers like that a dozen times. It wasn’t that he didn’t like doing it, watching Matty squirm until he was so sensitive that at the first stroke of George’s fingers on his cock he’d bury his face in his upper arm and spill for so long he was whining by the end, needing the sensations to finish with him. It was that watching it, watching his hair shiver over his face and his come pool on his stomach while he felt him shudder _inside_ , left George so close that he wanted his cock inside Matty more than he’d ever wanted weed or success or girls in his life. And it was out of the question, trying to put his dick in Matty when he’d just fingered him dry.

Matty would move around slowly for days, reluctant to let George’s cock anywhere near him until George finally found him alone and squeezed his thighs, coaxing whatever he could from him with dirty murmured words, telling him what he’d like to use him for until Matty stopped chewing his lip and breathed something like ‘yeah, alright, yeah, just the first few inches, George, _George_ ’ while George’s fingers stroked up under his shirt. And it would be _enough_ , Matty wide-eyed, stupid-pretty and wincing with the muscle inside him an excruciatingly tight circle around the middle of George’s cock, but George didn’t like being the one who needed to plead, even if he’d never concede to Matty that that’s what it was. He wasn’t the one who was good with words, and not being able to wrap his fingers around Matty’s ribs and fill him up was almost as irritating as the fact that he wanted to do it in the first place.

 George blinks at Matty’s open mouth and understands that he’s going to give him his fingers like that for as long as he wants tonight. One part of him is telling him that his balls are already tight between his legs and he needs to flip Matty over and thrust inside him until his skinny elbows give out and he falls on his face; that he deserves to get _proper_ fucked after whatever the fuck he thinks he’s been doing with George’s head for a month. Something more stubborn tells him that if he’s going be shoved off next time he tries to get Matty undressed, if this is the last flash of the singer’s flushed, sweat-slick skin that he’s going to bite down on for a month, he wants Matty to really _feel_ it.

He wants him to feel it until he screams tonight, until it distracts him when they play tomorrow and he bites down on the corner of his lip and murmurs his lyrics with glazed eyes for a moment, like he used to. He wants to see Matty sit at an odd angle a week later, eyes flying up to his, dark and shocked, his cheeks getting pinker as he wriggles his hips down a little more on the sofa, like whatever he felt with George’s fingers inside him was _so_ fucking good.

George’s cock pulses at the memory and Matty licks his lips. His fingers press into George’s cock a tiny bit more, and George leans forward and closes his fist around Matty’s, making him squeeze it. Matty moans softly and George strokes along his chin, letting his fingers linger under Matty’s lips.

“Forget what they’re for?” he says, giving Matty a wide smile in the dark.

“ _George_ ,” Matty whispers back, but something about his voice is disoriented, needy but automatic, and George looks up at his eyes. Matty’s eyes are closed. They’re not pressed tight, like he’s trying to pretend his anxiety isn’t there, or still like they’re focused behind his eyelids, the rest of his features shifting slightly as he works out a lyric. His eyelashes are almost stuck to his face and behind his lids his eyes are flickering back and forth and _you’ve got to be fucking shitting me_ , George thinks, wanting to strangle Matty and looking at him with a feeling of disbelief that something out there decided he was going to have _this_ shitty a night.

“Matty, wake the fuck up,” he hisses, and it’s _then_ that unconscious-Matty decides to grip his cock like he’s trying to wring an orgasm out of him in five minutes. “Jesus, no, you’ve got no idea what’s going on,” George curses, wrapping his fingers around Matty’s wrist and digging them in until Matty lets go. When Matty loosens his grip his fingers slip down over George’s balls, putting _just enough_ pressure on them that George sucks his teeth against the pleasure pulsing up from the base of his cock while he feels it leak pre-come onto Matty’s wrist. _Fuck, George_ , _you need not to come on him now_ , he thinks, shoving Matty off him without thinking about how much force he’s using. He winces and closes his eyes at the noise when the singer lurches backwards and smacks his head on the ceiling, and yeah, Matty’s _definitely_ awake now.

Matty’s fingers dig into George’s thigh as his eyes open and he finds himself falling forwards, instinctively bracing himself on something while his other hand flies to forehead. His breathing’s sped up, and George tries not to look at the lower part of his ribcage slipping up and down in the darkness under his thin white t-shirt. Normally he’d look his fill, watching Matty’s singlet cling to his ribs, sticky and shivery as he sucks in air onstage, or the pretty outlines of the bones jumping under his skin while he’s panting with George’s cock pressing deep under his solar plexus. But it feels more intimate _now_ , with Matty struggling to grip onto consciousness all at once. He’s vulnerable without trying to split open for a crowd of pretty faces who want to see him perform that vulnerability, without visibly slumping under the weight of hundreds of nights of interviews and screaming fans and longing for his own room until he’s climbing into George’s bed, shoving his fingers down his pants, stress-sick and whispering “ _Fucking now_ ”, looking to find something grounding in George’s skin.

It’s uncomfortable, thinking about it, looking away in the dark while Matty adjusts on top of him, because _that_ was normal to George, and this is…something else. He’s not used to Matty not wanting him to see _._ His cock pulses forlornly and George feels a dull flush inch up his chest while he arches his neck, looking listlessly into the darkness and willing it to sod-off while he waits for Matty to work out what’s going on.

“ _What the fuck?_ ” Matty whispers, and George’s eyes flick back to him. He’s a skinny shadow under an awkward spill of curls, his knees still pressing into the mattress on either side of George’s thighs while he looks numbly down at his own fingers in front of him. George looks more closely at him, blinking through the darkness and feeling something inside his chest soften, because Matty looks _stricken_. He quickly shoves his cock back inside his sleep pants, flushing as Matty’s eyes fly down to his crotch and fill with panic.

 “Oh _God_.”

“Matty, we didn’t, I just…your fingers,” he finishes with a slow exhale as Matty lifts his wrist up under his face, staring in wide-eyed shock at the glistening wet smear of George’s pre-come on his skin. “Look,” he mutters as Matty blinks slowly, “you climbed into my bunk and stuck your fingers up my shirt. It woke me up. I thought something _slightly_ normal was going on with you for the first time in blinking weeks.”

Matty looks down at him.

“ _Normal_. What, like bringing you off?” Matty’s sarcasm is strangely at odds with the streak of dark colour across his cheeks and the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders. They’re thrust forward, and George looks slowly up and down the inward arch of his frame and knows that Matty’s hyperaware of his cock, hard and flushed between his open legs in the dark. George meets his eyes, biting softly on the inside of his lip when he slowly inclines his chin down to the tent in the singer’s pants.

“I guess we’ll never know.”

“Yeah, screw you too,” Matty mutters, the pink on his face deepening as he uses George’s thigh to shove himself up and climb out of the bunk.

“Ow. Matty, if you’d listen-”

“Not now. In the morning.” Matty climbs into his own bunk without looking at him. It’s exactly what George _doesn’t_ feel like doing: leaving Matty alone to work himself into a state over whatever’s bothering him lately.

“ _Fine_.” He doesn’t want it left like this, but he needs some sleep. They’ve got a long flight tomorrow, and it’s not like he’s got the foggiest idea what to do with Matty, except for listen, listen and have a go at being some sort of solid presence, pulling some of the weight off when Matty’s dizzy and bending under everything he thinks about too much. _Which used to work_ , George thinks, _but isn’t, now_.

George lies in the dark and tries to block out the shit slowly rolling over and over in his mind. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep for a while, until he gets sick of trying to get comfortable around his cock, which is refusing to soften much on his thigh. He sighs in frustration, sliding his hand down the front of his pants and stroking it until it fills in his fingers again. Matty’s fallen asleep now, and George listens to the quiet, lost noises he’s making and is reminded of something strange he felt when he last had a serious girlfriend. George rolls his eyes and thinks it’s probably a stupid metaphor for something that only Matty would understand. He licks his palm and slowly works it up and down his cock in time with Matty’s breathing, unconsciously at first, and then because he’s built up a rhythm and is more ready to come than he is to think on it.

Matty whines in his bed and George’s arm flies up instinctively. He manages to get a fist full of tissues just in time, thrusting his cock into it and groaning at the stickiness which still dribbles down the sensitive skin. He tosses the wad of tissues into the corner of his bunk and listens to his own breathing slowing down for a minute, wondering why he’s left the box next to his pillow when Matty’s not climbed in here of his own volition for a month anyway.

George rolls onto his shoulder and feels a soft flush of that strange, not-quite-lucid feeling go through his system as his eyelids flicker on thoughts of Matty crawling on top of him, still smelling like sweat under a layer of that syrupy glycerine smell from the smoke machines, vibrating with energy as George’s thumb slides under his damp waistband.

“Not now,” he murmurs to himself, flinging his arm in front of his face and closing his eyes. “ _In the morning_.”

 

*

 

Matty walks over to him when they’re alone in the bunks the next morning. They’re the last ones still throwing shit from the floor into suitcases, and George is looking at some white t-shirts for longer than he needs to work out they belong to him while he waits for Matty to do whatever he’s going to do.

“So,” the singer says from behind him, “you wanted to talk about why you nearly concussed me last night?”

George sighs and moves to look at him. There’s a noticeable lump on Matty’s forehead and he looks mutinous. His hair is wet from his shower and he’s wearing that fucking pink top. It’s lifting slightly where he’s folding his arms over his chest, exposing a thin line of skin: an inch of the dark trail of hair under his navel and hipbones jutting out over his black skinnies. George wants to pull his hair fuck him on the floor.

“What was I supposed to do, Matty?”

“Not throw me into the nearest thing with metal in it?” Matty retorts with an incredulous glare, closing his arms tighter over his torso. “I’ve got a fucking splitting headache.”

“So what, then?” George looks down at him, eyes following the stiffness in Matty’s shoulders. “Think I should’ve gone for it? Got my fingers nice and wet for it and just-”

Matty shoves him into the frame of the bunks behind him, eyes dark and fucked-off and perfect, because they’re expressing some fucking _pure_ feeling, not the up-down unsettling cloud he’s obscured himself in for a month.  He looks furious, and so overwrought that the tense line of his collar bone is sticking out under the pink fabric. His blunt fingernails are digging into George’s chest, lingering where he shoved him, and George doesn’t think about trying to dislodge him.

“That’s what you asked for,” he says slowly, watching Matty’s eyes, memorising the feeling of those fingers on his chest. Matty tenses, his other hand curling tightly around George’s upper-arm, and George leans forward, looking for more of that reaction. “ _Please_ ,” he breathes, trying to imitate Matty’s voice. “ _George_.”

Matty’s eyes widen and his fingers fist in the front of George’s shirt, and then his head whips around as John clears his throat loudly from the doorway. George looks at John’s studiously blank face and groans internally. He forces his shoulders into a soft shrug, rubbing his knuckles awkwardly over his tired eyes.

“So,” John says, his eyes flicking back and forth between them, then he sips his coconut water and walks out without another word.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Matty mutters, letting go of George and following him out. George looks down at what’s left of Matty’s stuff on the floor and curses, sighing as he bends down to finish packing for him so he’ll be done by pick-up in fifteen minutes.

At the airport, he pulls Ross aside and tries to persuade him to switch seats with him to sit next to Matty on the flight.

“With him in the mood he’s in? On a twenty-two hour flight?” Ross asks. “Haha, nnnooooo. Good luck with that though,” he adds, clapping George on the back while George glowers at him. “What did you guys do to John this morning? He’s been pretty introspective today. Hann asked him what was up and he just said working with us is ‘interesting’. If you and Matty could try not to convince him that we’re all mental, that would be cool.”

“I got it, Ross,” George snarls, picking up his luggage and following Matty, who’s looking so forlorn at finding himself in an airport again that he’s not noticed a pretty fit air hostess flirting with him.

George watches Matty from the side of his eye while they’re ushered through customs, checking that he’s still got it pretty much together until it’s over. When they’re near their gate he steers Matty into a quiet corner and does his best to shield him from the odd bubbly fan without offending anyone. Matty lets him, not even putting up a fuss when George forgets to be narked with him and uses his palm on the bottom of his spine to guide him. He looks pitiful, folding his skinny legs up under him on his seat and sometimes forcing a thin smile for one of the girls looking over at him and whispering to their friends with wide eyes.

One part of George is relieved that Matty’s too anxious to get in a snit with him, but he still doesn’t like seeing him like this. He’s reluctant to go when Adam nudges him and tells him to go get himself a coffee, and he winds up bringing back one for himself and two for Matty. Ross gives him a thumb up and mouths ‘You’re so in’ over Matty’s head, looking like it’s the funniest thing he’s witnessed in weeks. George shoots him a withering look and settles down beside Matty. He drums on the inside of Matty’s seat with his fingers, thinking about the beat of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’ and letting it get stronger until the corner of Matty’s lip twitches and the singer hums along with it for a few lines. George considers it a win and dozes until their boarding call, wondering if Matty would ever let them cover a Fleetwood song.

Matty’s so worn-out by the time they’re sitting on the plane that he’s unconscious before they take-off, breathing softly by George’s shoulder with his hair falling over one eye. George sighs and tries to slide Matty’s pillow behind his head without disturbing him. He sets up his laptop when they’re up in the air, figuring he’ll work on songs, but mostly he looks sideways at Matty, only sliding his fingers over the open laptop for something to do with them when that itch under his skin feels stronger than it’s done for a long time. It’s not just that he wants to twist his fingers in Matty’s hair and fuck him in his lap, which he does, and it’s distracting, and George has a vague thought that he’s losing it, because Adam and Ross are only one aisle over. It’s that he also wants to say ‘ _Talk to me again_ ’. ‘ _Lie on your bed and wave your joint at the ceiling until you forget what you were talking about in the first place. Tell me your ideas until it feels like I’m putting my fingers around them. Use your voice. With my fingers sliding it lower on a mixer or yours sliding lower on my spine._ ’

George thinks it doesn’t really matter which, at this point. Matty’s voice will feel the same. It’ll feel good.

It’s a train of thought which distracts him on the overnight flight. George puts his headphones in and listens to Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled record while he looks at the darkening strip of sky in his window. ‘Landslide’ sets in quietly while his eyes are adjusting to the new darkness. It’s not a track he’d look for on his average night in, but George finds himself murmuring along with the lyrics. He doesn’t notice Matty’s woken up until a strong, quiet voice by his shoulder joins his for a line.

_“Well I’ve been afraid of changing, ’cause I’ve built my life around you.”_

George looks at Matty, but Matty’s looking past him at the black sky, eyes shining in contrast with the dull plexiglass. There are dark bags under them, but it looks almost stylised, stuck with his dark hair and pale pink shirt and lips. It looks striking. It feels odd, noticing Matty looking like the icon he’s becoming.

“Matty, hey.”

Matty looks at him for a moment with something inscrutable inside his eyes. Then he gives George a tired smile and shifts on his side, settling with his eyes closed and his chin tilted down, facing the window and George’s shoulder.

 

*

 

Matty wakes up later on in the flight, tries to read, loses concentration, puts his hair up in a bun and absent-mindedly plays with it until it’s a mess of curls falling out at the front. George gets an eyeful of his lower back when he leans his whole torso over the aisle to grumble about something to Ross, the vertebrae of his spine stretching out where his shirt rides up. George’s fingers itch when he looks at the dimples at the bottom of Matty’s back. He decides to go for a walk up and down the aisles, rolling his shoulders and trying to shrug off the whole wanting-to-slam-into-him-until-he-cries-out thing.

When he gets back, Matty’s dragging his plastic cutlery through his food with an unenthusiastic expression. Mostly the singer just sucks on his fork, rolling his eyes at something going on in the film that he’s watching and fidgeting in his seat. He crosses and uncrosses his legs, sighs, breaks his pen filling out the landing forms, curses and arches his spine, pushing his shoulders into the back of his chair. George looks at the outlines of Matty’s nipples where they’re visible under the fabric for a moment and puts down his pen in frustration because he’s fucked up his own form. By the fifth time Matty’s elbowed him in the ribs, despite the fact that they’re in business class and Matty’s skinny frame could fit in his seat twice, George is done with it.

When Matty’s wrist flies up to fix his hair again, George wraps his fingers around it, pulling Matty closer to him and letting his left hand put pressure on the singer’s ribs. Matty freezes in his grip.

“Matty, I love you mate, but if you don’t _sit still_ for the last hour of this flight I will fucking tie you down.”           

He’s expecting Matty not to lose it with him in front of everyone, but he’s not expecting _nothing_. Matty slowly looks up at his eyes, silently waiting for George to let go of him. There’s no sign of irritation in his eyes; they’re dark and wide on George’s as George releases the pink fabric he’s crumpling against Matty’s ribs.

For the last hour of the flight, Matty sits so still that George’s pulse sledgehammers in his neck. When they need to disembark, Matty is sitting still. George feels his eyes watching him while he pulls both of their carry-ons down from the lockers. Everyone is starting to shuffle into the aisles with their bags when George turns around again. Matty’s thighs are spread flat on the seat in his tight black jeans, his lip curling slightly while he looks up at George with his eyes almost black. George tilts his head back, turning his eyes towards the door without breaking eye contact with Matty and trying to ignore the arousal curling in his belly.

“Come on.”

Matty slowly stretches and pushes himself up from the seat.

 “Not a fucking word,” Matty says, without looking at Ross, who’s raising his eyebrows at them.

“I’ve said nothing,” Ross says solemnly.

Matty’s his usual self when they’re out of the airport, pretty and dishevelled and screwing his fingers in his hair with a fractious, put-upon look while he answers his phone on the drive.

“Why?” he’s asking someone down the line. “Look, no-”

“What?” George mouths, and Matty makes a vague ‘fuck-this’ hand gesture and continues to argue. George loses track of his words and watches Matty bite down on the skin of his chapped lips and then lick them to wet them.

“Fine, fine,” Matty is saying. “But it’s bollocks and it’s gonna be shit.” He ends the call and looks at George. “You and me’ve got an interview in two hours.”

George looks at him incredulously.

“We’ve got fucking what?”

“That one that was supposed to be moved later when our flights out changed. Apparently it wasn’t and now we’re going.”

“Fuck off,” George groans. “Why can’t Ross or Hann do it?”

Adam and Ross glance up from their side of the van for a second and then continue eating Skittles.  
  
“Because they’ll want me to answer four fucking questions about whether I’m fucking Taylor Swift and you’re sitting through that shit too,” Matty tells him with a look of finality on his face. George sighs.

When they get into their hotel room they’ve got twenty minutes until they need to set off for the interview. Matty’s stripping his shirt off for a shower and George is resigned to the fact that he’s not going to get one in himself when Matty looks over at him.

“You need to get in with me, you stink.”

George looks up at him in surprise.

“Are you sure that-”

“Am I sure that you _stink_? Yeah, George, get in.”

“I meant that whole not wanting me to touch your shoulder thing,” George mutters, but Matty is already gone, undoing his fly and walking into the bathroom.

George follows him slowly, sliding his own jeans down his thighs while Matty steps under the water. Matty’s eyes flicker over to him for a second, looking up and down, and then he rolls his eyes and looks away from the glass. He doesn’t look enthusiastic about the situation, and George tries not to let his skin slide over Matty’s when he steps into the cubicle.

The shower’s big enough for both of them, but the water really only covers enough of it for one, so they silently work out an awkward turn system, which inevitably involves a lot of Matty’s wet hair landing on his skin, and Matty’s shoulder sliding into his chest. George’s fingers feel more slippery than they are as he quickly runs them over his body, trying not to focus on the soap dribbling down Matty’s ribs. They don’t look at each other’s eyes, and George tries not to look down at Matty when he doesn’t need to work out when he’s moving, conscious of his cock filling slightly between his thighs.

He’s almost done, extending his fingers just past Matty’s upper arm to slick his fingers up with soap for his legs, but he misses, concentrating on avoiding Matty’s elbow and his eyes at the same time and not on the bottle. George looks at his knuckles where they’re pressed into the wall over Matty’s wet shoulder and finds himself so frustrated at not _understanding_ Matty, for the first time in years, that he lets them slide down until they’re dragging over Matty’s shoulder and his collarbone. The lump in Matty’s throat moves up and down at the contact, but he doesn’t shove George away.

“Matty…what’s going on?”

Matty looks up at his eyes. His dark hair is plastered onto his face, making him look darker and paler at the same time. His eyes look _ruined_. George hasn’t seen Matty look like that since the last time he was craving a line. His eyes are full of an uncontrolled, defeated _want_ , and George understands _that_. He inhales and Matty looks back at him and bites his lip.

“ _Quick_ ,” he whispers, and George doesn’t need to be asked twice.

He slams Matty’s spine into the wall, his fingers digging under his collarbone so hard that the singer whines. George slides his other hand under Matty’s arse, picking him up and letting his fingernails stick into the soft skin while his lips open for him. Matty wraps his legs low around his waist, the muscles in his thighs flexing against George’s skin while he pulls George’s lip between his teeth. George licks the inside of Matty’s mouth with his cock swelling and the water gushing over them. He slides his hand down Matty’s abdomen, lacing his fingers in the wet curls at the base of his cock and tugging until Matty curses and arches into him.

“Fuck!” Matty’s head slams back into the wall when George’s fingers drop lower between his legs. “Fucking _now._ ”

George shoves the shower tap down and the door open without looking at them, Matty tightening his legs around him as he stumbles out of the shower, not interested in taking his tongue out of Matty’s mouth while Matty’s fingers wrap around his neck. George spins them around and Matty yelps as his arse is shoved into the side of the sink.

“Ow! You’re fucking useless,” Matty tells him, and George gets a fist in his hair and pulls it back hard. He puts Matty down and then shoves him around and down with a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ll need to brace yourself on that,” he says, looking at the bumps of Matty’s spine and the small curve of his arse where he’s bent forward. His skin there is pink from the heat of the shower and George’s tight grip on it, and George’s pulse jumps in his cock.

“Oh come on,” Matty says, his cheeks turning a matching pink as he glances at the mirror. “In front of that? That’s so-”

“Something you’ve done to someone?” George presses his thumb up into Matty’s perineum and grins at the shudder that he gets in response. “You’ll be fine like this.”

Matty curses and braces himself on the sink as George wrenches his hair up again, his wet fingers gripping the marble as he shivers and scowls. He lets his wet hair fall over his eyes when George pushes two fingers into his mouth. George doesn’t like it: not seeing the look in his eyes, so he pulls on Matty’s hair until he’s forced to bend his neck back, snarling as he looks at George’s eyes in the mirror.

“Look,” George tells him, and slides his fingers into his mouth to the last knuckle. Matty looks into his eyes in the mirror with the same fractious, put-upon look from the ride over, but he _licks_. He licks up and down George’s fingers, working his lips around them until everything under his cheekbones starts to hollow out. He looks pretty as fuck with his bones framing what he’s doing to George’s fingers, and George wraps his arm around his waist from behind and strokes his ribs.

“Did you miss that? Me fucking your mouth like this?” he whispers into Matty’s ear as he thrusts his fingers inside him, because fuck but George missed this.

Matty laughs when George’s fingers slide out of his lips, a wild, thick-with-spit sound that makes George’s cock leak as much as the obscene popping sound his fingers make coming out of Matty’s mouth.

“You’ve never fucked my mouth,” he says, inclining his head down toward his crotch like he’s looking through his own body to George’s cock. George trails his slick fingers down to the rim of Matty’s arse.

“You always need it here so badly,” he counters, watching Matty gulp down a moan, his weight lurching forward at the pressure of George’s fingers.

“ _Oh God_ ,” Matty chokes out, realising what George is about to do a second too late to prepare for it as the pressure gets greater. George thrusts his fingers inside him, closing his eyes at the feeling of Matty’s muscles wrapping tightly around his saliva-slick fingers inside him. It’s doing things to George’s cock like he’s sixteen and sliding his fingers inside his girlfriend’s underwear for the first time in two weeks. He tightens his arm around Matty’s ribs, listening to the guttural sound Matty makes when his largest knuckles press against the outside of the muscle.

“You- fuck,” Matty stutters out, his mouth open wet and panting and his elbows looking a bit wobbly with his arms still braced on the sink. He closes his eyes as George’s fingers twist inside him.

“Look,” George insists, pulling his hair back again until Matty opens his eyes.

“ _What_?” Matty’s voice is irritable and breathless at the same time. “What is it with you? Love my fucking face that much?”

George grins, rubbing his fingers inside him to drag more of those pretty, breathless little noises out of him.

“Not bad, innit? You look almost pretty like this.”

“Motherfucker,” Matty spits, whining when George pulls his hair back.

“This is what you like,” George says, looking intently at Matty’s eyes in the mirror. It comes out softer, more of a question than he’d intended as he thrusts his fingers in and out. The slow grind of Matty’s skinny hips into his fingers is making his cock drip onto the floor, his mind filling up with thoughts of filling _Matty_ up properly. But George doesn’t want to give in to it yet. He wants to give this to Matty first: give him something he seems to need from this _thing_ they’ve got going on. He thinks about Matty sitting in his seat on the plane with his thighs still and spread, gazing up at him with his eyes warm and slightly glazed, waiting. George leans forward and bites down on the skin at the base of Matty’s neck, twisting it in his teeth until Matty curses then slowly licking over the pink marks.

“Matty,” he says, letting his eyes settle on Matty’s in the mirror. “Want you still. No talking.”

For a second, Matty looks like he wants to slap him, but then he exhales, slowly, unsteadily, and readjusts, spreading his thighs farther apart. He puts more weight on his arms and stops struggling, letting George pull up the rest of his weight with his fist in his hair. Matty watches his eyes in the mirror with that glazed, attentive expression, and George feels unsteady on his own feet for a moment. He drags his fingers almost all the way out, and then shoves them back in until they won’t go any deeper.

If Matty moves an inch, it’s only from the force of it pushing him forward. His eyes widen on George’s in the mirror until George thinks they’re going to pop out of his head, but he doesn’t move or let out a sound. For a minute, George is worried, looking at those wide eyes and stiff shoulders and wondering if he should not do this, but then the shudders begin to push through Matty’s body and George looks down at his cock, flushed pink at the tip in the mirror, and thinks ‘ _Good_ ’. George is into this: seeing Matty stripped down, without his words and his fragile self-image clutched tight to his chest, until he’s exposing something so simple it makes his fingers tremble.

George rubs his fingers into Matty’s prostate over and over again, untangling his fingers from his hair and reaching down to where the pink head of Matty’s cock is poking into his abdomen. He strokes it until it’s leaking all over his fingers and Matty’s lower lip’s gone white from biting down on it.

“You like this too, don’t you?” George asks, and a vein in Matty’s jaw twitches slightly. George grins, realising that Matty’s first instinct was to nod. He hides his grin in Matty’s neck, murmuring, “It’s fine to nod now.”

Matty nods quickly, his teeth still pressing into his lip while George’s fingers stretch inside him. He looks so relieved at the tiny movement that George drives his fingers up and scissors them over that sweet spot inside him until Matty looks like he’s going to lose it, the shuddering in his shoulders sending the water from his hair into new patterns down his back. George watches the trails of water curving down from his shoulder blades to his arse and smiles, because Matty really does look pretty like that. He looks prettier than when he’s sticking his lip out for a shot or moaning under stage lights, but it’s enough, for now.

“You can let it go now, Matty,” he says.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Matty’s palm slams into the mirror as he pitches forward with his head hanging down. “Oh fuck, oh God, _George_.”

“I’ve got you,” George says, sliding an arm around Matty’s waist to support him, and Matty lets out a strangled laugh.

“You’ve got me for five minutes. Take them out.”

Matty makes a low, moaning sound as George slowly pulls his fingers out, then he wheels around, wincing as he shoves George in the chest. George lets Matty push his back into the door frame, groaning when the singer wraps his fingers around his cock.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Matty sneers, and George smirks down at him, even though the long-awaited contact with his cock is slowing down his brain.

 “You thought I liked getting my dick pumped? This is why you write the lyrics. Real intuitive, Matty.”

Matty just smirks back at him and twists his wrist, his eyes dark and his teeth showing as George gasps and pushes up into his fist, leaking pre-come onto his fingers.

“Intuit this.” Matty slowly licks it off his fingers and then extends the middle one. He walks into the bedroom, not bothering to look back to see if George is following him. George watches the water slithering down his spine and fists his cock while Matty bends over to find something in his bag where it’s lying on the floor. Matty looks behind him and rolls his eyes.

“No need to ask what _you’ve_ missed.” He walks over to George and drags his lip between his teeth, fisting his cock so hard it almost hurts. George’s eyes widen when Matty’s other fist slides down his cock too. It’s slick with lube, and Matty works it over George’s cock until it’s slippery, twisting his fists in opposite directions until George is two seconds from shoving him face down on the bed.

“Matty…” he says, trailing his fingernails down the singer’s lower back in warning. Matty presses back into it for a moment, and George lets his nails scratch the delicate skin, wondering if anyone’s gonna notice the raised pink lines when Matty takes off his shirt. Matty’s lips part, his tongue wet and pink as he moans, and then he shoves George down onto the bed.

George feels his skin leaving a damp patch on the bed while Matty climbs on top of him. Matty’s inner thigh slides along his cock when he lines their bodies up, and Matty flushes and curses. George digs his fingernails into that skin too, smirking as Matty’s breath rasps through his lips. He pinches the inside of Matty’s thigh. George likes that Matty’s skin’s so sensitive there. It makes him want to close his teeth around it and suck. He could leave marks to play with later, pushing his thumb into them through Matty’s jeans when no one was looking in interviews, if Matty would let him between his thighs like _that_. Matty arches back and grinds down on his dick in retaliation. George gasps as the leaking tip of his cock catches on the rim of Matty’s arse.

“Aren’t you too sore?”

“Aw, like you _care_.”

George moans when Matty lines up and squeezes around the base of his cock, making sure it’s in place as he rubs back into it.  

“It’s not-”

Matty clamps his other hand down over his mouth, pressing slowly back onto his cock.

“Whatever, George. Later. I want to…” Matty swallows as George feels him stretch open under the pressure, “Just...” Matty clutches his belly and groans, and George’s eyes widen as the head of his cock slips inside the singer’s body.

“Jesus, Matty,” he says, the muscles in his thighs twitching with pleasure. Matty’s barely slick inside, just sticky enough from his own saliva and the lubricant smeared on George’s cock that it isn’t uncomfortable for _George_. George’s pulse is pounding as he looks up at him. The look on Matty’s face is intense, eyes screwed up tight, pink tongue showing where his lips are parted. His breath is hiccupping out of his lips and he’s flushing as he keeps tensing up around George’s cock. George strokes his hand over his ribs and makes a soothing sound without meaning to, and Matty shudders.

“Pull me down on it.” Matty’s voice is low, and George lets his fingers settle on the singer’s hips and looks at his eyes.

“If it’s not too-”

“ _George_.”

George pulls him down to the base.

George’s eyes nearly roll back in his skull. The pressure is so good his head spins for a second, and then he’s feeling the shudders rip through Matty’s frame from the inside.

“ _Uuuuuhhh_.” It’s like Matty’s voice is being wrenched up from the bottom of his ribs. He collapses onto his elbows and whines, more guttural sounds sticking wet in his throat, like he needs to be making noises he’s not even able to get out.

“ _Fuck_ , Matty.” George forces himself still, struggling with the dazed feeling of pleasure seeping up his body. “It’s too tight, you need-”

Matty lets his cock slide an inch out from inside him, and George needs to stop mid-sentence, air whistling through his teeth while he digs his fingernails into Matty’s sides.

“ _Shit_.”

“Uh-huh,” Matty chokes. He sucks in air and forces himself up on his arms, slowly pulling up on George’s cock until only the tip is inside and then grinding down again. They’ve never done it like this, with Matty on top of him, his hair falling down over his shoulders and his muscles damp and tight from George’s fingers in his mouth. But something about it reminds him of the first time they fucked. Matty’s eyes look wide and blown, like he’s drugged-out from grinding on George’s dick. They’re tearing up from the pleasure-pain and the pressure, and when George thrusts his hips up slightly the first tear drags over Matty’s skin, leaving a glittering smear across the angles of his face.

“Not gonna last,” George says, gasping as he bottoms out again. Matty’s sliding up and down now, with one arm wrapped around his ribs like he can feel it deep inside him like this. It feels like his muscles are trying to wring every inch of George’s cock dry, the friction so much _more_ than George is used to. It’s making him flush and groan, those too-close sensations pulsing through the muscles in his belly.

“ _Finish_ me,” Matty insists. George closes his eyes and thinks about what he’s learned about Matty’s body. He pulls Matty forward, lining up a better angle inside him, puts his fist in his hair, and slowly pushes on Matty’s abdomen, his cock pulsing as Matty whines from the extra pressure.

“ _What the fuck_?” Matty whispers, a slow, languid tear wetting his lip while he’s forced slowly off George’s cock.

“You’re so thin I think I could feel it inside you. With a little more pressure down here.” George understands that Matty’s at his limit, twitching over his words, pretty face streaked with tears and moaning like he does when he’s aching inside. He’s got no intention of putting more pressure on him, only pressing his fingertips into his skin to indicate where he _could_ , because Matty’s imagination has never not gotten the better of him. Matty’s so insecure and stubborn about owning up to his thresholds for sex, like it’s part of that overarching rough-love narrative he’s so invested in. George likes watching his eyes widen: the look in them when he’s wondering how far it’ll go. It’s what he expects now, but Matty’s voice forces itself out of his lips like he _needs_ to tell George something with his muscles all slick and messed up inside.

“ _George_ , no, I-” and George is so shocked and so into it, into Matty stretched open and _honest_ all at once that he lets the pressure off in a heartbeat, sliding his fingers out from under Matty’s belly and wrapping them around his erection. Matty falls forward, his weight forcing him down on George’s cock until it’s deep inside, then George is pulling him down by his hair, and Matty’s biting on his lower lip, their spit mixing when George tilts his chin into it, and Matty’s coming on his fist, his ribs, a sticky line over one of his nipples. It’s a shock of movement, like George sometimes feels on one of their good nights onstage, and he sees the same pink and white lights behind his eyes when he comes, lips pressed into Matty’s and licking the pulse inside his lip.

Matty recovers first, shoving himself off George’s chest and wincing for the full fifteen seconds it takes him to pull himself off his cock. George lies still, blinking at the light on the ceiling and wishing his pack of cigarettes was within arm’s reach. His limbs are full of a persuasive languor, so he settles for looking at Matty. Matty’s pulling on his ubiquitous black skinny jeans and cursing when he looks at his hair in the mirror.

“Fuck it, I’ll put it up,” he mutters, looking about for a tie and then spotting George. “What you looking at me for?” Matty picks up a tissue box and pitches it at his chest. “ _Move_ , George, we were supposed to be down in the lobby five minutes ago. Someone’s gonna bang on the fucking door,” he mutters to himself, not looking at George while he shoves on his boots. George cleans himself up and stretches, idly watching Matty pick out a blouse. He finds some new jeans and a clean t-shirt in his suitcase while Matty’s tugging the floral fabric over his shoulders, hair tie between his lips while he fixes his hair into a bun.

Matty’s still struggling to do up buttons quickly when George is ready to go. He looks good, George thinks, looking down at the singer while he leans on the door with his fingers in his pockets. Matty’s chest is still flushed, the faint pink tint looking like a strange mix of the white and pink flowers framing it on his shirt. George runs a hand lazily over the glossy fabric and tweaks Matty’s exposed nipple.

“Yeah, very clever, very helpful,” Matty says, not really sounding that irritated. “Didn’t you get enough of it?”

George hums a bit of A$AP’s ‘Roll One Up’ and grins. Matty rolls his eyes. The singer does up the second to last button and shrugs, his fingers closing on the latch of the door.

“Let’s get it fucking over with.”

 

*

 

Matty’s pretty quiet on the drive, winding down the window an inch to blow out smoke and looking into the sky. George looks over at him and wonders if the sex was like a momentary lapse for him: if Matty’s mood will sit firmly in between them in this interview. Matty’s bottom lip smudges on the window as he stretches up to exhale his smoke, and George takes a mental picture of the mark on the glass while he runs over answers to the regular questions in his mind. _‘This is where our band name comes from and these are some of our favourite shows we’ve done and the fans from this country are great.’_ George thinks the blurry silhouette of a dirty lip on the pristine glass is a good image, with the city blurring by.

The interviewer is a pretty girl with a tongue-piercing and a pink plastic choker around her neck. She grins at Matty and flirts with him when the camera’s rolling and when it’s not. Matty blinks slowly, and George is grudgingly steeling himself for fifteen minutes of mumbling his answers, but then Matty stretches, smiles and flirts back. Matty steers them through the interview with his usual mix of wide-eyed, serious looks and laissez-faire attitude, his words rolling over his lips without any planning. The interviewer is into it, and George is so relieved that he forgets to add anything until Matty nudges him.

When they’re done, the interviewer slips Matty some weed. Matty gives her a toothy grin and leans in to kiss her cheek, whispering something to her behind his hand.

“So,” George says when they’re back inside their hotel room and he’s closing the door. “Is this gonna last then?”

Matty shoves his hand down the front of his jeans.

They fuck without properly pulling their clothes off, Matty’s skinnies around his ankles and his shirt falling open in George’s lap. George’s t-shirt is still on, his jeans quickly pulled down to his knees. He stretches against them, his hand on Matty’s lower back, wondering if some of the lingering slickness he felt when he quickly wet his fingers to open him up for this was from when he spilled inside him before. He feels his feet on the floor and Matty’s hair on his shoulder as the singer curses, lips open and head falling forward. He looks past Matty’s shoulder at the odd, off-pink wall while Matty arches in his lap.

Matty’s looking down, mostly, but sometimes their eyes meet. Matty’s pupils are large and glittering a bit as they catch flecks from the city lights slowly appearing in the window. George lets Matty control the pace, sometimes licking his fingers and pressing them into the skin where their bodies join. Matty rides him quickly, his movements sometimes a little stilted, like he’s not used to it. _Why would he be?_ George thinks, losing focus on the wall when his stomach muscles spasm. It’s the first time, for this position, for silky fabric trailing over that long muscle in his pelvis as his orgasm builds.

It’s over quickly, Matty riding it out for one more minute while George gasps because his cock inside him is so sensitive he almost wants it to stop. Matty digs his fingernails into George’s shoulder blade while he’s coming, pushing into the skin until George thinks he might be bleeding a little under his t-shirt. He pulls it off when Matty climbs off his lap, groaning about the fact that he’s got come on a shirt he wanted to perform in. Matty’s got some of his come on his neck too and George grins and inclines his head towards it. Matty puts his finger in it and makes a face.

“Do you wanna force that open so we can smoke?” George asks, tilting his head over to the large window. It’s starting to get dark out, the city casting a pink and orange glow over Matty’s face. Matty looks over and nods, walking over to the window while George heads into the bathroom to look at his shirt. There’s a thin line of blood on it where the white fabric was touching his shoulder. George isn’t sure what to do with it, but he thinks doing something now might be better than doing nothing. He scrubs at the patch with soap and warm water, but the stain just becomes a wider, pinkish mark. George sighs.

He finds Matty struggling with the window. It’s got a latch, but it looks like it’s been glued shut. George closes his fingers on Matty’s and puts his arm into it, breaking the latch.

“Ow,” Matty says, but he leans out of the window. He’s shirtless, but he’s pulled his black jeans up, pale knees poking out of the rips while he looks into the lights. George brings over some papers and Matty digs his weed out of his pocket, passing it over and watching the sky while George rolls it in silence.

“What did you say to that girl?” George asks when they’re leaning out of the window.

“I said that I love and respect journalists more than anything,” Matty deadpans, and George laughs.

“You probably said something more full of shit than that, amazingly.”

“I said that I liked her choker and her tits.”

George snorts.

“Classy, Matty.”

“Says the guy who once said ‘who’s got the best _tits_ ’ in an interview.” Matty says. “It’s not like it matters. She only wants the same thing from me that you do.”

George glances at him.

“She wants you to be the singer in her band?”

Matty looks at him for a minute and then blows out smoke in a cloud that goes pink for an instant in front of the sunset.  

“Is what gonna last?”

George thinks about Matty stumbling under lights, shivering under blankets, looking out the black window on their plane, and the pink smears of colour on his skin, from the lights, from his shirt, from the sunset.

“Nothing.”

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next part might be split Matty/George p.o.v. Last one is still Matty's p.o.v. : )  
>    
> [My tumblr](http://nacrevoit.tumblr.com/)


	3. Crystal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, that one fic that never updates has updated. I PROMISE 5 parts is as far as this pink nonsense is going to go. I promise. Those of you who were waiting for this and have pointed that out and/or said flattering things about it are lovely. 
> 
> Perspective in this chapter is George's feat. Matty's.
> 
> Also, look, I've named chapters now based on which Fleetwood Mac song I was listening to obsessively while writing them. This has gone possibly even more buck wild than Matty has with the colour pink. I thought it'd be a fun challenge to see how many times I could use the word 'pink' and get away with it...and then I found that point...and...refused to stop. 
> 
> Please feel free to point out any typos in this. I found some pretty bizarre ones editing this time.

  
  
It’s like a routine. Gigging, smoking, doing press, drinking, sticking their fingers in each other’s mouths. Sometimes in that order, sometimes not. George finds out what it’s like to wake up on slow mornings with Matty’s thigh wrapping lazily over his, the sweaty muscles tugging languidly until George turns on his side and his erection slides against Matty’s flat belly. Matty’s always more awake than he is, smirking as George grumbles at being woken up even though he’s already running his hand over Matty’s chest and thinking about sliding inside him where he’s still slick from last night.

George likes it better when Matty brings him his coffee to try to get him out of bed. He accepts the coffee with a grunt, watching Matty through half-closed eyelids until he turns away and then snaking his hand out from under the covers to wrap around Matty’s arm. He likes Matty’s eyes widening and the lilt in his voice when he says “No George, not now, you idiot”, despite the fact that he’s letting George pull him down, climbing on top of him and undoing his own jeans where they’re stretched tight over George’s lap.

“You’re gonna mess me up,” Matty gripes, pulling his conscientiously tousled hair with two fingers and sticking his lip out as George slides his hand inside his blouse and thumbs at his nipple. “You’re shit.” The last part is more of a whisper than a proper complaint, and George’s smile widens as he sits up and rubs his other thumb in the cleft of Matty’s arse.

“You’re shit,” he imitates, sticking the flat of his tongue in the hollow of Matty’s throat and puffing warm air over the wet patch.  Matty sighs dramatically and shoves him down.

George finds out that Matty likes being on top, a streak of pink across his cheeks and a streak of curses coming out of his mouth as George spreads his arse apart with his thumbs and bounces him in his lap like a ragdoll, snarling when Matty pulls his hair and squeezes around him. When he’s feeling lazy he lies on his back and lets Matty control it, and he thinks Matty likes that _more_ , sliding down on his cock with his fingernails digging into George’s upper arms and then riding it, angling his skinny frame so it goes real deep.  George watches Matty slowly grinding and arching and getting into it like it’s a performance, throwing his head back and moaning with his throat glittering and his eyes on the ceiling. His chest flushes and his head snaps forward again when George spills inside him, wet-lashed eyes settling under George’s on his lips.

George finishes him like that, leaning forward to wrap his fingers around Matty’s ribs and force him up and down, rubbing the sensitive skin of his cock where he’s sticky inside.

“You look so perfect like this,” George murmurs, his voice lower than he was expecting, and Matty comes on his own lip.

Matty spits and curses for five minutes, but George memorises what he looked like, and the next time he finishes Matty like that, he finds he doesn’t mind the sensitivity or his come running onto the base of his cock.

George finds out what Matty looks like when he wants to leave somewhere to fuck: the sliding eyes and arching spine and not the agitated jiggling of his thigh like when he wants to leave to smoke. He finds out what Matty looks like when he skins up for sex and not to shower: impulsive and dirty-pretty with his fingers winding in George’s belt.

George works out, a bit slower, what Matty looks like when’s looking for sex with someone else. It’s not that George’s not seen Matty look girls up and down before, that he’s not seen him flirt with anything that moves and switch his body language into something coyer and prettier when he meets someone whose skirt he wants to get into. It’s that none of that was necessarily distinct from his time with George.

And now it is, George thinks, raising his eyebrows as Matty turns his entire body away from him to lean in and talk to a pretty fan backstage, despite the fact that they’re on the same seat and the fan is sitting on a slight angle two feet in front of them. He’s used to Matty pointing out a fit girl to him, both of them telling one another off for being misogynistic and looking at the girl out of the side of their eyes anyway; to Matty smirking at pretty interviewers with one arm draped over George’s shoulder; to being on the receiving end of Matty’s idle flirting when the singer puckers his lips at him and silently laughs when he comments on their married couple lifestyle on radio, or fans his eyelashes out and grins when George looks over at him in the semi-dark, shoving his hips into the sensitive spot of a girl underneath him. It’s not really like that now.

Matty’s managed to almost turn his back to George on the seat, and George nudges him in the ribs, trying to get him to sit in a less stupid position or shove over so that he’s not left looking like a tit who’s not into meeting fans. Matty either doesn’t notice or isn’t impressed by the gesture, leaning forward and nattering at the fan about liberation and the colour pink with his lashes moving softly up and down. George sighs and goes off to smoke with Ross, but he looks over at Matty sometimes and wonders what that’s about.

 

*

 

Matty trips into their hotel room late that night with a girl pressed into his ribs.  He’s wrapping his arms around her like he only does with his girlfriends, her pretty, ringed fingers pressing into his belly under his blouse and his thigh pushing inside her legs as they stumble towards his bed. Matty’s playing with her hair and whispering nasty shit in her ear, pulling back from her lips with a soft moan and a flash of the dark, affecting eyes that he typically only works up for shooting their videos and performing.

George is surprised, catching flickers of those eyes where the pink neon sign of the building across from them glints in the dark brown. It’s not Matty’s style: fake intimacy in one night stands and pretending skin is anything except something to lose himself in, if it’s not. George thinks of Matty smirking at him for a minute as someone leads him to the bed by his belt, leaning back with his arms slightly spread at his sides, fallen-open shirt framing his stuck-out hipbones. They look glassy and pink under his skin with the washed-out city light spilling onto them, sinking into the edge of his black skinnies, Matty flushed and smirking and looking like he’s the only thing alive in the room. George is lost in the image for an instant, layers of colour and Matty’s musky-smelling skin sticking onto each other in his memory. He thinks he’s smoked too much again, rolling his shoulders and listening to Matty cry out fifteen feet over.

George looks over at the singer, at the line of his spine, and the damp trails his hair is leaving where his face is buried in the girl’s breasts. Matty’s fingers are between her legs instead of his cock, the thin line of muscle in his arm stretching prettily as he looks up into her eyes and pushes them forward. Their legs are sliding up and down, entwined and shining with slickness on their thighs. It’s lasting a long time, leaving a gluey atmosphere in the room which makes George lick his lips and his cock thicken.

Matty isn’t looking at him, and George thinks in circles for a while, idly fisting his cock and wondering who this girl is and if they’re gonna sleep over. He lies on his back with his eyes closed, stoned and listening to the wet noises coming from Matty’s bed. George doesn’t need to open his eyes to tell when Matty slides inside her: it’s that sticky sound in his voice that Matty gets when it’s feeling _really_ good.

“ _Shit_ , you’re wet.”

The girl whispers something back and George slowly licks from his wrist up his palm and his fingers.

“No, no, I love it.”

George slides his slicked hand between his thighs and wraps it around his balls, his thumb stroking into the vein on the underside of his cock. Matty’s voice rasps like it does when something rubs on the most sensitive parts of him, and it’s like George can feel it, that shiver running up his spine from the opposite side of the room.

“Babe, _babe_ …”

 George thinks about those pink flecks in Matty’s brown eyes, and the moment when he almost thought the singer was looking at him, reflected in the window glass, and comes.

 

*

 

The girl isn’t there in the morning.

Matty’s unconscious, his hair sticking to his face, so George throws some jeans on and goes to eat breakfast with the others. Ross is frowning over a crossword and running his hand through the steam from his coffee.

“What’s another word for obsequious? Same amount of letters. This is a stupid word, Matty would be on this.”

“I think Matty’s seeing someone,” George mumbles through a mouthful of toast.

Ross chuckles. George looks at him.

“What?”

“Who’s he seeing then?” Adam asks, sounding like he’s just going along with it.

George furrows his brow at both of them.

“Some bird. I wasn’t _introduced_ , he was just with this fit girl last night moaning and making lost-soul eyes like they were in a black and white porno and he was trying to impress someone.”

“I think,” Adam says lightly, looking like he’s trying not to have a facial expression at all as Ross snorts his mouthful of toast onto his crossword, “that might’ve been for your benefit.”

George looks at him incredulously.

“What’s the benefit to me of Matty trying his pining Bonnie and Clyde shit on for some model in the middle of the night? In my room?”

Ross’s shoulders are shaking. George looks at John, who is smiling politely into his milk. George doesn’t understand what’s going on with anyone this morning.

 Matty walks into the room with wet hair and a pink bruise on his neck.

Ross looks up at him and points at the crossword.

“What’s a ten-letter word for obsequious?”

“Oleaginous,” Matty tells him without looking at it.

“Oh fuck you. Seriously?”

“Mm,” Matty nods and steals George’s coffee.

“Fuck this crossword. I’m going.” Ross throws his hands in the air and pushes himself back from the table. Adam follows him out with a last look in Matty’s direction, and John takes a long sip of his milk and then takes it with him.

‘What’s the purpose of that word?” Ross asks from somewhere down the corridor. “There’s not one. …Only one fucking word for that concept…it’s not…sense…” his words fade in and out and Matty looks at the door for a moment and then inhales his coffee. George looks at the bruise on Matty’s neck.

Matty’s leaning on the edge of the table, which George doesn’t understand, because there are five chairs around him, but whatever, it’s Matty. The singer’s got his tightest black jeans on, his thigh jiggling under the thin material for a split second in George’s peripheral vision when he shifts his lean from one foot to the other.

George washes his dishes, makes himself a new coffee, and imagines Matty’s thighs jiggling on either side of his face.

“Someone was a bit into it last night,” George ribs lightly, walking over to Matty.

Matty’s facing the table now, looking down at the crossword.

“Matty.”

Matty frowns.

“Why are there pieces of toast on this crossword?”

George rubs his thumb on Matty’s shoulder.

“Who was the girl from last night?”

Matty turns around to face him. He leans back on his palms on the table, looking up at George with his eyebrows raised and a smirk tugging at the corner of his lip.

“Who?”

Their teeth clash when George goes for his mouth, leaning forward into Matty’s personal space and sticking his fingers into his hair. Matty licks behind his teeth at first, the angles of his face still sharp with a smirk as he pulls at George’s belt, but when George lightly smacks his fingers away the singer pushes him off.

“Mmmfff, what you doing?” Matty says with an accusatory look, his palms flat on George’s chest and his tailbone pressed back into the table. “Do you want some or not?”

George chuckles low in his throat.

“What, you’re gonna have me stick my fingers in you with _my_ come on them but you don’t kiss or something?”

Matty makes a long-suffering face and pushes against George’s chest, but not hard enough to really shift it.

“What d’you wanna kiss for? You could kiss loads of people.”

George grins.

“I could finger plenty of people too, but…” he looks at Matty’s spread thighs and loses his train of thought. “Besides, want some of _what_ , Matty? Not just our kitchen, is it?”

Matty’s eyes slide over to the door for a moment and then he rubs one thumb along the trail of hair under George’s navel, looking up at him with that pretty, insolent face he makes whenever anyone’s not giving him what he wants quickly enough. It gets under George’s skin, locking his eyes onto Matty’s until his cock is slowly filling in his jeans. Matty takes one hand off George’s chest and presses it back on the table again, like he understands that George isn’t going anywhere, now. George wonders if Matty understands what to look like to make him tick: if he reads him and puts it on like he does with other people.

“We’ve pretty much got this whole floor to ourselves. What is it, you afraid John’s gonna walk in and see how much you love pulling my fucking hair?”

George slides his fist between Matty’s thighs, rubbing his knuckles against his balls through the thin fabric until Matty shudders and tries to close them. George gets a fistful of his arse and lifts him up so that Matty’s weight is pressing the rim of his arse into George’s thumb. Matty grips onto his shoulders for support and curses, and George grins and runs his teeth along that pink bruise on Matty’s neck.

“More that you’re gonna come all over yourself and the table while I’m doing that,” he fists Matty’s hair in his other hand and pulls it back, licking lazily along the bruise and rubbing his thumb in circles against the fabric. Matty squirms and George presses his thumb up hard until Matty gasps and then stills and shudders. “What is that, like a millimetre of fabric? Are these girls’ jeans?”

“Why,” Matty counters, “is that your thing now? Want me to pretend like I’m one of your groupies? Playing with my hair and moaning like ‘Ohhhh, _George_ , you’re _so_ big!’” George drops him on the table and Matty laughs in his face as his tailbone smacks loudly on the wood. George yanks Matty’s jeans down with one hand and tugs the pink bruise between his teeth.

“You love playing with your own hair more than any girl I’ve ever screwed,” he murmurs into the singer’s throat, feeling Matty moan as he tugs at the skin a little more. “Who was that girl last night?”  
  
“A fan, who’d you _think_ , George?” Matty rolls his eyes, his jeans sticking to his thighs as George gives them a last tug and looks at Matty’s face.

“You looked like you wanted to read her French poetry or some shit.”

Matty gives him a scornful look and makes a face, sucking his cheeks in slightly around his lips.

“Je n’aime pas les femmes.”

“And what the fuck does that mean, Matty?” George asks, staring at the flushed skin of Matty’s arse pressing into the table. Matty’s not wearing underwear and it’s distracting George from the few French words he actually knows: Matty’s thighs spread almost far enough apart to expose that tight hole where he wants to put his cock, but not quite.

“It means you don’t _read_ anything, George. Now stop looking and fuck it.”

“Fuck _it_?” George asks, but his voice comes out low and the way Matty’s talking’s got his cock leaking inside his briefs. He pulls his fly down and gets a grip on his cock and Matty bends his spine forward to look, eyes wide as he looks up and down the outline of George’s cock under the white fabric. Matty’s eyes settle on the wet line of pre-come on the material, like he’s mesmerised, and George closes his eyes against the image of Matty’s lower lip pushed down under the weight of his cock.

“You’ve fucking _wet_ them,” Matty whispers, a smirk and a strange tinge of awe in his voice as his eyelashes lower, and all at once his long fingers are pressing into George’s cock, wrapping around it, and Matty’s slowly _licking_ along the sticky line on the fabric. George curses when he feels the wetness of Matty’s tongue slide over the head of his cock, sensitive under the thin layer of fabric which is clinging to it.

Matty pulls back and looks up at George like he’s shocked about what he’s just done. George looks at Matty’s dark eyes and his hair framing his jaw and licks his lips.

“ _No_ ,” Matty says, his pupils large and glittering black as he swallows.

“I didn’t ask, you’re the one who just failed to keep your mouth off my cock.”

“Oh, like I’m the one who’s unable to control his _mouth_ for fifteen minutes if he doesn’t get to stick his cock into something,” Matty snaps. He switches his voice to a low mumble, obviously trying to imitate George. “‘Matty, please, I just wanna put in a couple of inches. I just wanna rub it on your hole. I just want that tight, pretty muscle wrapped around my cock.’ Girls must _love_ that shit,” Matty adds with a sarcastic leer, but under that he looks flushed and annoyed at the same time. George resists the urge to climb on top of him on the table.

“More like fifteen _hours_ while you rub cream on your fragile arse,” George says, pulling his cock out of his underwear and watching Matty’s eyes flicker up and down. “Spreading it apart and trying to look at yourself in the mirror.”

Matty rolls his eyes. His face has gone the same colour as his cock, pink and nudging against his belly.

“Yeah, you’d love that, George. Someone wants some therapy.”

“Playing with your stretched, pink hole?” George says the last words slowly, trying to look like he’s not still getting used to things like that coming out of his mouth. He doesn’t say anything like that to girls much, but he likes that glazed look that Matty’s eyes get when he thinks of something really dirty. George looks down at Matty and thinks about the singer getting all pliable and flushed when he talks to him, slipping back on the fingers inside him so his arse presses into George’s hand. “Yeah, I’d love that.”

Matty looks him dead in the eye and leans back on his arms, spreading his thighs that last inch, exposing that tiny pink crease under his balls.

“So stop fucking about, _George_.” Matty’s eyes are black and he looks so intense that George wants to drag him off the table and fuck his face on the floor. He looks amazing, George thinks, with his hair falling over part of his eye and his black skinnies stuck tight around his thighs, squeezing them. His fingers are white and pink where they’re taking the weight of his shoulders on the table, long and flexing and pretty. 

“I want to watch you finger yourself.”

“ _What?_ ”

George leans forward over Matty, wrapping his fingers around the singer’s on the table.

“Those skinny, pretty things with the dirty nails that you finger girls and microphones with. I want you to do something useful with them.”

“Oh screw you, George,” Matty snaps, but he lets George wind his fingers through his and squeeze. “What the fuck do I get for that?”

George snorts.

“Whatever you were looking for when you walked in here wearing these and no underwear, probably.” George tugs at the jeans where they’re making a pink line from the pressure on Matty’s thighs.

“Oh, so I’m asking for it? Pretty original that, George.” Matty’s lips are almost pressed into his. His breath tastes like a mix of coffee and one of those sickly sweet, sticky lipglosses girls use to make their lips look wet. George thinks about the girl Matty was with last night, their lips sliding together on a background of glass and pink neon. He inhales the musky smell of Matty’s skin and rubs his fingers into the pink line on his thighs, his cock jumping over the way it’s a tiny bit sticky with sweat.

“Shove your fingers up your arse, _please_.”

Matty sighs, pushes him back, fixes him with a withering look, and shoves two fingers into his own mouth. He loses none of the look whatsoever, and George’s cock pulses as he looks at Matty’s fingers sliding in and out of his mouth with that contemptuous, put-upon look in his eyes. Matty’s eyelashes lower a little when George puts a hand on his lower back and pushes him forward so that they’re closer together. He slides his fingers under Matty’s chin and tilts the singer’s head back so he’s looking into his eyes. Matty sighs with his fingers filling up his mouth, like it’s such an arduous task, but his shoulders are pressing towards George and he lets George wrap his fingers around his waist and inch him closer again.

“You like to watch this shit?” Matty asks, pulling his fingers out when George presses forward and his cock leaks on Matty’s thigh. He leaves the tips of them pushing into his lower lip, slick and shining there as he looks up at George slightly incredulously, and George tries to pretend he’s not conscious of the sensitive head of his cock rubbing in the wetness it’s left on Matty’s thigh, and that Matty isn’t either.

“You’ve got a pretty mouth,” George says, but it comes out in a lower, less poking-fun voice than he was going for, and Matty just leers at him and sticks his thumb into the inside of his cheek, stretching it obscenely. George exhales and slowly wraps his fingers around Matty’s wrist, guiding his fingers inside his lips again. Matty lets him push them in until his lips form an ‘o’ around his last knuckles, sucking around them with a look in his eyes that’s a mix of petulance and glazed, slick pleasure. George guides Matty’s fingers in and out and rubs his cock up and down on his thigh. Matty looks up at him and George finds himself looking at Matty’s eyes as much as his fingers sliding in and out of his lips. His eyelashes look long and dark from this angle, twitching slightly while he makes a soft ‘Mm’ around his fingers, like George is _feeding_ him something he _really_ likes.

“You and your oral fixation,” George murmurs, and Matty lets his head fall back, his fingers sliding from his lips onto his chin. It’s messy and pretty as fuck, Matty’s thigh getting sticky at the same time as his lips. The air around them is musky now, and George feels oddly like he’s suffocating from lack of contact, with Matty rubbing his thigh along his cock and his fingers digging into Matty’s waist.

“Thinking about your cock in my pretty mouth, George?” Matty flings back, neck arching and spine arching under George’s grip on his waist, pushing his flushed cock forward.

George looks at him and his voice clings to the inside of his throat.

“ _God_ , Matty…” he leans forward, not understanding where he wants to touch Matty the most, but Matty pulls his wrist out of his grip and leans back on the table, his arse pressing into the crossword as he presses a foot into George’s thigh to stop him.

“You’re mental if you _think_ I’d let you do that,” Matty says, looking so pleased with himself with his knees raised and his black skinnies stuck around his thighs that George wants to push his cock between those pink, smug lips _more_.

“You’re a little shit, did you know that?” Matty rolls his eyes and mimes blowing him a kiss. George grins. “It turn you on, not giving it up? Pretty flushed there, Matty.”

“A lot of questions from you, George,” Matty says, running his thumb down his abdomen. “And I’m flushed because I’ve been breathing through my fucking nose because you asked me to play porno for _you_ , you twat.”

George pushes forward, catching Matty off-guard as he wraps his hands around his thighs and presses them closer to Matty’s chest.

“You love it,” George murmurs, his voice low as he presses his lips into Matty’s, biting and sliding his tongue into Matty’s mouth until Matty’s lips are slick under his. His cock pulses forlornly, but he finds he’s willing to wait. “You love it whenever you’ve got _anything_ someone wants.”

“‘Someone’,” Matty must be going for mocking, but he sounds slightly off, like the pressure of his bent-back legs and his pink cock between his thighs and the musky air are slowing his words.

“You love it whenever _anyone’s_ thinking about you.” George finishes, and Matty presses his lips into George’s lower one.  
  
“Oh, just you, George,” Matty lands it with the mocking voice this time, fluttering his eyelashes under George’s face with a derisive look in his eyes. Matty’s arm flexes against his skin and George glances down and finds Matty’s hand between his thighs. George backs up, looking down at Matty’s still-slick fingers trailing over the rim of his arse.

“Like this?” Matty asks, his eyes dark and a smirk back in place.

George’s mouth falls open as Matty presses his fingers into that tiny soft place between his thighs, something inside his chest flipping strangely as Matty’s rim gives slightly under the pressure.

“Put in one at a time.”

Matty rolls his eyes.

“I’m not gonna be on this table all day, George, I’ll put in what I like.”

George’s eyelids are feeling pretty heavy as he watches Matty press up with two fingers and then look slightly surprised when they don’t just slip inside. There’s an odd combination of that sleepy lust haze George sometimes gets around Matty in the morning and that thudding sensation of want mixed with concern as he watches Matty chew the pink corner of his lip, because he realises that Matty’s nervous. George strokes along Matty’s waist and Matty exhales softly.

“You need them wetter than that,” George murmurs, and Matty, taking instructions as a challenge as usual, pushes his weight back on one arm, fixes George with a look, and shoves two fingers into his arse.

“ _Uhh_ ,” Matty whines, lashes flying up in a pretty, shocked look as the arch of his back jerks and straightens up. George curls his arm around his waist to steady him, pulling him forward and pushing his nose into Matty’s neck, sucking in the sweet, musky smell in the hollow of his collarbone.

“It’s pretty tight in there, huh,” he mumbles into the skin, smirking softly when all Matty manages is a little gasp. “I told you not to,” George murmurs, supporting Matty with his arm and pressing his lips softly into the dip above the bone. He likes the feeling of the soft skin of his forearm pressing into the bumps of Matty’s spine, and of Matty’s pulse thumping under his lips, his other hand flying up to press into George’s chest. George is content like this, and it makes him flush a little and close his eyes. Matty whimpers, pulling George out of that thought and sending a rush of pleasure up his cock. Matty adjusts his fingers and George groans as he leans forward and feels the slow pump of Matty’s arm.

“You smell sweet,” he says, biting into the juncture of Matty’s neck and shoulder and rubbing his teeth into the muscle there.

“What?” Matty’s voice is whispery and lust-heavy under the irritation and George’s cock aches. “You’re not even _looking_.”

“I’m gonna look,” George murmurs, trying to ignore his cock leaking as the tiny hairs on Matty’s arm rub along his belly. “It’s not like you’re going anywhere.” Matty’s fingers fan out on George’s chest, and then he appears to realise that he put his hand there in the first place, flushing and turning away, his hair getting in George’s eyes.

“It’s alright,” George says, not really understanding why. Matty’s flush only deepens. “Look at me. Look at my face.”

Matty turns his face back towards George but his eyes dart around, his lashes flashing dark and agitated on his face as he avoids looking straight at George for more than an instant.

“How do I…?” Matty asks, giving his arm an uncomfortable-looking tug to indicate what he wants, and George feels a flush of heat go up his body as he awkwardly works his arm into the tight space between them and puts a little pressure on either side of Matty’s palm. There’s something intimate about it: showing Matty how to play with himself like that, and that’s he’s memorised the way to play with Matty inside like that in the first place.

“Curl them a little…and rub there,” George’s voice comes out raspy as he pushes his thumb into the skin of Matty’s palm, persuading his fingers to bend. “That’s your prostate,” he adds stupidly as Matty shifts his wrist and their pulses rub together.

“Oh, you’re so clever,” Matty uses the tone that usually sends journalists into cringing, apologetic silence. It’s incongruous, with his fingers probing anxiously inside him and his breath coming in shivery puffs of heat on George’s lips. “I looked it up.”

George’s laugh is slightly strangled as the silky skin of Matty’s cock slides against his forearm where they’re pressing into each other.

“Only you would go and look it up. What did you think it was?”

“I understood what a prostate is, I-” he thrusts his fingers up and makes a little sound that’s almost a mewl. “I-” George presses their lips together, suddenly and instinctively, his eyes screwed shut, leaning his forehead into Matty’s, wanting to push into the lips that made that tiny sound.

“You didn’t think you’d personally got one or something?” he asks as he pulls back. Matty looks shocked for a second; by the question or the oddly soft kiss, George isn’t sure. Then Matty laughs, his hair leaving lines of a tickling sensation over George’s collar bone and chest as it follows the movement of his shoulders.

“I am pretty singular.”

George laughs, and then his cock pulses as Matty thrusts up and _really_ mewls, the lump in his throat bobbing inches away from George’s face.

“I’m gonna take my arm off your waist now,” George says slowly, feeling tiny drops of sweat along the line of his spine in spite of the fact that he’s not really _done_ anything. 

“Finally,” Matty says, extracting his hand from George’s chest, but he flushes and turns his head away again when George steps back and looks at his hand working between his legs on the table. His arse is stretched until it’s almost porno-pink around his fingers, and George has no idea when Matty managed to wriggle a third finger in there, but he has to fist the base of his cock to stop himself from coming just from _looking_ and thinking about the fact that Matty somehow _likes_ it like this, full and only prepped with his own spit, his flushed cock bouncing slightly against his belly as he shoves his fingers deeper inside him.

“Like that,” George’s voice is low as he tries to control it: tries to persuade Matty not to stop. Matty looks up at him with his eyes almost black and his lips slightly parted, his mouth shining wet and pink inside as his lashes lower slowly, gaze intent on George. What that look is saying is pretty clear; _I’m not gonna stop until you’ve looked your fill._ Matty sometimes looks at him like that when he pushes him into a wall and digs his fingers into George’s ribs and says something like “What _you_ need,” in that lyrical voice of his, like he doesn’t even need to finish the sentence, and he never does finish it, because George digs his fingers into his arse, mirroring the pressure on his ribs, and shoves his lips into Matty’s. That look always ends with him sticky and ruined on top of Matty, the singer sighing from somewhere near his neck as his thighs loosen their grip on George’s sides.

George doesn’t understand why Matty gets him like this: not just on the look-out for sex like he is with girls, but so into it that he isn’t able to concentrate on anything but Matty until he feels him shudder and come pressed into his skin. George looks at the shiny tip of Matty’s cock and the tight, strangely pretty cinch of his arse around his fingers, and that dark, fixated look in his eyes, and loses his ability to speak for a clean minute. Matty’s fingers are pumping quicker inside him, and he’s chewing his lip so much it’s turned a brighter pink, looking at George with those eyes.

“You’re so pretty like that,” George rasps.

Matty rolls his eyes but his cock leaks on his abdomen. George’s cock jumps in his hand and he realises he’s been pumping it without thinking.

“I want to look properly,” he mumbles.

“What?” Matty’s voice is lyrical with pleasure this time, and George clears his throat.

“I-” George looks at Matty’s thighs twitching as his last knuckles leave his body and then sink inside and lowers himself to his knees.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The pitch of Matty’s voice shoots up, and George smiles, picturing his eyebrows and his eyelashes flying up without looking up.

“This is perfect.”

Matty moans.

“Why-”

“Please,” George says softly, and Matty sighs and shivers, his thighs twitching exquisitely in front of George’s face.

“You’re a freak, you understand that?” Matty pants, and George grins and looks at the skin on the inside of his thighs. It _looks_ as soft as it feels when George strokes it from behind, pale and smooth compared to the messy star-shaped centre where Matty’s thrusting his fingers. The rim of his arse is pink and tan up this close, and George thinks it’s pretty mental that he’s so into this.  _It’s normal_ , he reminds himself, his pulse feeling erratic in his neck. _Guys love looking at this with girls. Guys like you._

It’s not like he’s about to forget who he’s with though. Matty’s long, callused fingers look like _his_ and not anyone else’s, and the pattern of his little shudders left imprints on George’s nerves some time ago. They shoot pulses of familiar pleasure into George’s cock, and he closes his eyes and bites into the soft skin of Matty’s inner thigh, shuddering himself when he opens them and sees the tatty pink oval of marks in the skin. Matty whines and George licks the marks. He presses his fingers into the join of Matty’s crotch and thigh and looks at the obscene image of Matty’s balls shifting slightly up and down with the awkward rhythm of his fingers. The singer’s leaning back on his hand and the angle’s obviously pretty trying.

George looks at Matty’s fingers disappearing inside his body one last time and then leans forward and slowly licks Matty’s wrist.

“ _Oh shit_ ,” Matty whines, and George bites on the butterfly of his pulse point. George’s cock feels so heavy and sensitive between his thighs that he almost has to pause for a moment, lapping at Matty’s knuckles, pink from the temperature inside him and straining. Matty moans, a strangled, uncontrollable sound, and George inhales the smell of the musky skin around him and licks up Matty’s fingers until his tongue meets the place where they slip inside his body. And Matty comes.

The spill of white come onto his flushed skin is so sudden and unexpected that George isn’t sure what to look at first. There’s the rhythmic tightening of Matty’s balls, a darkish pink in front of his face, the awkward trembling in his thighs, pleasure-stricken muscles perceptible under the skin up so close. George loves the feeling of them slowly loosening under his fingers. There’s Matty’s hipbone arching up more than once as a line of come slips over it, that pretty, unconscious rocking. And there’s the way that, for a moment, that tiny muscle clings to Matty’s sticky fingers until they almost still inside him, the wet streak from George’s tongue still shining on his hand.

“Matty,” George moans, climbing unsteadily to his feet. His centre of gravity feels like it’s dropped to someplace around his cock.

Matty lies back on the table, his head lolling back for a moment as he lazily arches and cracks his spine. He looks up at George then, on his back and propped up on his elbows.

“Come on then,” is what the singer tells him, thighs flushed and pupils shot with pleasure, and the table almost breaks under their weight when George shoves inside him. Matty holds onto his shoulders and pants while George fucks into him, the sweet, musky smell of his hair filling George’s consciousness. The puffs of air from Matty’s lips feel soft on his shoulder, and George is mumbling something which might be Matty’s name: he isn’t sure at this point. Matty occasionally gasps when George’s cock rubs against parts of him that are still too sensitive, but George is too gone to think about trying to get Matty up again anyway. He drives his elbow hard into the table when he orgasms, and Matty’s fingers drum on his spine for a minute as he curses, making him shudder a bit as his nervous system settles down.

George doesn’t think too much about putting his fingers in Matty’s hair and pressing their lips together, though they’ve not done it when they’ve _finished_ before.

“Mmff,” Matty protests lightly, but he lets George’s lips linger for a second before he presses his hands into his shoulders and shoves him off. “You’re crushing my ribs, you idiot.”

George pulls off, collapsing into one of the chairs that he didn’t upset in his frantic lunge towards Matty.

“You’re really not with that fan then? Like I didn’t just…” George trails off airily, running his hand through his hair and glancing out the window at the muggy morning sky.

“What?” Matty asks, sitting on the table and trying to wipe come off his stomach with newspaper. “Oh,” he adds, flushing slightly for some reason. “That, no, _probably_ not settling down with her, considering I’ve no idea what her last name is or where she’s gone or what I was up to generally last night, George.”

George looks out of the window again and sees a cloud that looks like a Japanese crane. There’s a creeping, pleasant feeling in his chest that he can’t quite ascribe to the strange cloud.

“Speaking of which,” Matty says softly, and he’s rubbing his temple as George turns back to him. “Fix me some more coffee, love.” The singer sticks his lip out and asks in that eye-roll voice that he uses when he’s parodying himself, his hair falling lopsidedly over his eye when he primps it, mimicking his flirtations with fans.

George flicks him the finger, and flicks on the machine. 

 

*

 

“Look.”

George is trying to point something out to Ross in the magazine he pinched from the lobby, but Ross is pretending not to notice him. George likes to look at the pictures in National Geographic while he’s stoned.

“Ross. Look at the penguins.”

Ross’s eyes flicker, but he puts down his own book, folds his arms and frowns, looking decisively into the air in front of him.

“Ross isn’t speaking to you,” Adam says patiently. “He says there was a crack in the kitchen table and come on his crossword.”

Matty looks up from his phone. There’s something uncertain in his expression, and George rubs his fingers anxiously on the base of Matty’s spine without thinking. Matty doesn’t move into the touch, but his eyes slide back to his phone.

“That could’ve been anyone’s come,” the singer says in a sugary tone.

Ross turns to George with a silent, wounded ‘This is your fault’ look in his eyes. Adam sighs.

And Matty leans back into the touch.

 

*

  
Matty looks at himself in the mirror, pushing his hair over his shoulder and his hip out. He’s wearing a thin pink top he found lying on the floor near George’s drums after a show one night, though he’s narked that he can’t for the life of him remember the girl pulling it off in the first place. Matty thinks he was pretty into ‘Love Me’ that night, and performing’s about the _experience_ within oneself and everything, but he still prefers not to miss out on possibly fit girls peeling their gear off, screaming and shoving their pretty tits forward in front of him.

 _It’s all a bit mental_ , Matty thinks, pushing his flat chest out in the mirror, _but it only goes on sometimes so it’s not too misogynistic to like it, is it?_ The pink viscose of the top clings to his ribs and lifts two inches above the line of his black skinnies if he attempts to lift his shoulders. He’s just about to rule it off as too ridiculous to wear out and pull it off when George appears in the doorway.

“Did you steal that from one of your girlfriends?” George is looking at him in the mirror like he thinks Matty’s lost it, but his pupils distend a little. Matty squints at George’s eyes for a moment and then lets go of the shirt where he’d fisted it to pull it off and leaves it.

“It was a present for you, George,” Matty tells him, looking at his dry lips in the mirror and then licking his thumb and dragging it over them. He understands that’s not gonna make it any better, that they’ll only dry up again, but it’s such a routine motion he’s gotten stuck in it. “I picked it off the floor of your _pedestal_.”

George snorts, his eyes running along Matty’s ribs in the shirt.

“I don’t think it’s my size.”

Matty turns to face George and leans his arse back against the sink.

“I doubt they’d pictured you wearing it, George. More like rubbing your face in it and thinking about their tits or something.”

“Not gonna be able to do much of that with you wearing it though,” George notes with a smirk.

“Probably not,” Matty assents flatly, looking over his shoulder at his face in the glass and then turning fully around and vaguely considering eye-liner. “What you doing?” he asks, frowning as George steps forward and puts his hands on his waist, his long fingers smoothing the soft material up Matty’s ribs. Matty’s pulse picks up and he pretends to be adjusting his hair as he leans forward into George’s fingers.

“My present, innit?” George’s fingers press under his ribs and up, as if they’re trying to push inside Matty’s chest. The movement makes Matty take in a little gulp of air, straightening his spine and looking at the two of them in the glass: looking at the pale slice of his skin revealed under the pink top, and at George’s black pupils, growing in increments. Matty wonders if George’s dick is getting bigger too, and presses back slightly, looking at the picture they make. Matty’s not got small fingers, but when he pulls them back to press on his chest, pretending to be preening for the mirror, they look slight compared to George’s. George’s pupils are large and dark, stoned or interested in Matty’s top. Matty’s leaning towards the latter. There’s a slight bump where the seat of his pants digs into George’s crotch, and Matty watches George lean back and look down in the mirror. Matty wonders what the shiny black fabric looks like sliding back into George’s cock.

“The platform for the drums was your idea,” George reminds him, his eyes looking unfocused on Matty’s in the mirror. Matty looks at him blankly, lost in thoughts of skin and unconscious of what he’s talking about. “If you’re not into it…”

“It’s fine.” Matty tries to think through George shifting his position so his cock is sitting in the dent of Matty’s arse. “Works pretty well, like most of my ideas.”

“These work pretty well…” George sniggers, rubbing a thumb an inch inside Matty’s tight black jeans. “Looks like black lacquer…” he trails off, running that thumb down the curve of Matty’s hip towards his groin until his fingers are wedged, stretching the clinging fabric. Matty’s cock is still partly soft, not pushing out of the skinnies but pushing them forward in a lump which is plainly visible in the mirror in front of them. Matty thinks about putting George’s fingers under his top, letting him twist his nipples, struggling until they collapse on the floor, pushing into each other… that wet pink tongue pushing into his arse. Matty flushes, removes George’s fingers and pushes them apart.

“Out. Plans.”

“What?”

Matty realises that George never asked why he was dressed like that or where he was going and wants to smother himself.

“I’m heading out.”

George looks into Matty’s eyes, not in the mirror this time.

“I see that.”

Matty looks at him. George’s eyes’ve got that cloudy, opaque look in them. It’s a look that’s driving Matty up the wall trying to work out what’s going on in his mind. If Matty was the praying sort, wasn’t in fact pretty much opposed to praying, he’d probably have prayed to someone to strip that look out of the link between them, like a smudged laminate off a vivid picture. He’d probably have been on his knees begging for it a month ago. George extends one finger and strokes it along the exposed line of Matty’s collar bone so slowly, eyes so clouded, that Matty feels a phantom pressure run over the bone when it’s gone.

“I’ll probably watch porn and pass out.”

George is leaning against the shower door without shoes or socks on, with jeans on that have gotten too ripped up for it to be ‘in’ anymore. His skin looks like milk in the spacy hotel lighting. Matty thinks about watching the colours come out on George’s skin in low-lit places, the dark pink of his cock and of Matty’s teeth marks in his shoulder.

“That’s fascinating, George.”

Matty listens to the low buzzing of the channels George is flipping through as he tries to find his phone and puts his jacket on. The rustling of the lining sliding into place on his top sounds loud with only the dull noises of predictable porno in the background.

Matty’s on his way out when George’s voice usurps the silence.

“Matty.”

Matty’s fingers pause on his swipe key in the lights slot.

“You look pretty.”

Matty flips him the finger and lets the door shut behind him.

 

*

 

The bird Matty’s gone home with smells like lamingtons. Matty vaguely remembers the little cakes from an interview they did once. They’d accepted the whole batch to take home after and he and George had polished them off late at night stoned. Matty’s not sure if he should _really_ be doing this: going to someone’s flat and pulling her top off in the hall without the foggiest idea if they live with anyone and if he’s likely to be spotted and snapped on someone’s phone. _I mean, it’s whatever,_ he thinks dismissively to himself, drunk and thumbing her nipples. _It’s not like it’s a bong in the street and that’s gone on now anyway._

Matty doesn’t understand how girls smell like so many things at once. _Like a fucking cake_ , he thinks vaguely as the girl’s body presses into his. Her perfume just smells like various, mixed sugary foods, and Matty rubs into it, thinking doing this with her skin is sort of like rubbing cake batter into his leather jacket with a tinge of sweat and _girl_. He leaves his clothes on until it’s looking pretty impossible to, 5 feet and 11 inches of pretty skinned up girl on his lap on a double bed. If the girl isn’t into the odd assortment of little bruises and marks George’s put on his skin she doesn’t look it, not that it bothers him anyway. He cups her breast and licks, rubbing his face into the scent of perfume and sweat leaking down her chest, the vanilla-icing smell of deodorant combining with it.

He’s drunk enough to like the chocolate, _actual_ chocolate, taste in her mouth from her cocktail, rubbing his tongue over her gums and then spreading her legs apart. The inner lips of her pussy taste strong, like musk and skin and a salty stickiness he can’t quite disassociate from the sweet smell of what he thinks might be body lotion on her thighs. He thinks about George, trying to snog him in the kitchen. Wonders if there’ll be traces of this inside his mouth, later.

 _Pretty twisted_ , Matty thinks, guilt and lust mixing as he tries to ignore her pulling on his hair. She’s pulling so softly it’s like having someone tug his hair into a loose bun. Her pussy feels amazing around his cock, but he doesn’t quite lose the comical uselessness of the image.

 _I suppose I do like it pretty rough,_ he thinks after they’re done, though he has no idea why he’s trying to mentally plea-bargain the lack of inspiring sex with a one-night stand who doesn’t look concerned by his distraction. Matty doesn’t like to cuddle but he lies about with her lying in the crook of his arm for a bit, letting her perfume and deodorant and the smell of her pussy sink into his skin. He’s got a nose full of blonde hair with a synthetically sweet smell of strawberries or something in it. He thinks about George, pressing his face into his collar bone and sucking.

_‘You smell sweet.’_

Matty sighs and looks around for his top.

“Love, I’ve got to go.”

 

*

 

There’s still a low buzzing originating from the T.V. when Matty gets inside, casting a sickly white glow on the wall behind George’s bed. Matty squints into the darkness, inhaling and trying to work out if the air in the room is so sodding _moist_ because George’s wanked off too much. He looks at the lights slot on the wall and realises that George’s not bothered to get up and put his own swipe card in, which would explain why there’s no light besides the flickering bleached-out light from the porn. Matty had forgotten that slot was for the air-con as well. He eases his shoulders out of his leather jacket and wipes his sticky arm, realising it’s gotten like that within five seconds of _existing_ in this room. He feels like he’s walked into a sauna.

“Have you been watching porn in the dark for the past _five hours_?” Matty asks, walking towards George’s bed. “It’s fucking stifling in here.”

George is lying flat on his back, with his fingers lying loosely over his soft cock. He’s naked, flushed, his other arm flung over his head, the sticky sheen of sweat on his skin reaching his closed eyelids. Matty looks down at him incredulously.

“Are you deaf?”

George cracks open one eye.

“Been listening to it, mostly. Someone’s screamed ‘pump me’ five times in the last hour. Not sure if it’s the same person or not.”

Matty looks out of their long window at the panoply of city lights in a broad line under their balcony. The central part of the floor-to-ceiling glass doubles as a balcony door, and he wrenches it open, watching George’s chest goose-bump at the sudden change of temperature. The air rushing in from outside is still muggy, and Matty’s shirt is damp and clingy on his lower back.

“You’re going to go blind,” he tells George matter-of-factly. “You understand this is the city, innit? In Australia. In a heatwave. It’s still like _thirty-five_ degrees outside and it’s actually _worse_ in here. You’re an idiot.”

George opens both eyes and looks down at the leather jacket Matty’s holding in his left hand.

“But you were still thinking about what you’re dressed in being proper ‘in’.”

Matty’s neck is wet with sweat from the short walk from his cab to their hotel lobby. He gives George an aloof look.

“You smell like come.”

George sits up, his thighs wide apart enough that Matty can see his cock plumping a bit as his eyes rub over the place where Matty’s pink top is sticking to his ribs. Matty finds himself stood between George’s legs, looking down at his eyes with his chest heaving under the pink viscose more than processing the sticky air really necessitates.

“You smell like pussy and cake.”

George moves from on the bed to on Matty so quickly that Matty gets a bit lost until his back is pressed into the wall.

“ _Shit_ ,” Matty hisses. He slithers his fingers over George’s lower back, his shoulders, behind his balls. All of the contact between their bodies feels sinuous because of the slickness on their skin, George’s thumb sliding between his shoulders and on his lower back and into the crack of his arse in a long, oily line. Matty needs to sink his fingernails into George’s skin to get any purchase, digging his fingers deep into his arse and his shoulders, loving the way George snarls.

George pulls his skinnies down so roughly the zipper nicks Matty’s skin, and Matty rips his fingernails down George’s spine, feeling the skin on his lower back split pink under his edges. Matty struggles while George presses his fingers up into his perineum until George puts his fingers on his ribs and shoves him into the wall, pinning him. Matty’s cock pulses over it, his eyes going anywhere on George’s frame that they can reach. It’s wild and flustered and pink lights flashing behind his eyelids when he blinks, looking at George like this. When Matty looks down at George’s cock it looks _polished_ and his mouth waters and he wants to die, pressing his head back against the wall, feeling George’s fingers under his top.

George is pulling the viscose off Matty’s skin until it’s stretched out from his body and then pressing it back so it sticks and clings to his belly and his ribs. Matty’s chest is jumping up and down, and he turns his head sideways, inhaling and striving _not_ to look at George, tall and shining with perspiration and smelling like come from playing with his own cock, without Matty. Matty doesn’t understand why that makes it _more_ intense.

He feels George step back from his body and kicks his skinnies off his ankles, thinking about what it’ll be like if George is going to pick him up and fuck him pressed into the wall like this, already feeling lonely in the dark without George’s skin.

“You love it.”

Matty rolls his skull back to meet George’s eyes, his head still arched back, damp hair pressed against the wall so his head slides slightly, like it’s perched on his throat and pasted with glitter glue. Matty thinks he must be glittering in the dark, the way George is just looking at him, his hair or his exposed skin, like the fans like, but like a sodden paper doll, like he could be ripped into abstract, pretty pieces. It makes him want George inside him, solid, screwing him, come spilling in his back. He looks George dead in the eye.

“I love it.” Matty’s voice rasps and George’s eyes go cloudy, his smirk not quite sliding inside them. Matty thinks he can take a poke at what it’s about this time: that George probably wants to know if Matty’s mocking him.

Matty steps forward and presses himself flat against George’s body, the wet pink viscose glueing their skin together like a shimmering, almost biological film in the darkness. He pushes his fingers up into the dips of George’s collar bone, pressing up on his toes to find George’s lips with his. Their lips are slippery and the skin around Matty’s lips gets wet, George fisting the fabric of his top at his waist.

“What’s that then?” George asks, his voice wet as they pull apart.

Matty leans up again and licks just inside George’s lower lip, liking the oddly porno feeling of it as George’s pink tongue pushes up a little in his open mouth.

“A concession.” He looks into George’s dark eyes, gunning for that coy look that photographers like so much, tongue out and pushing into George’s for a moment. “You wanna suck my face so badly let’s go, George.”

The look George gives him frays Matty’s nerves, but then his drummer is gripping his wrist and pulling him down onto the bed.

“Jesus Matty,” George is murmuring as Matty’s knees dig into the bed and their legs entwine. “You smell like fucking ice cream melted on you or some shit. You look like someone I picked up off the street.” George’s fingers are pressing into his arse, pulling it apart, and Matty feels oddly exposed in the dark hotel room.

“Fuck off,” Matty says, their lips slipping into and inside each other’s, wet, lush, spit like pussy and fucking Cadbury Cream liqueur and _George_. He goes to pull his top off and George’s fist closes around his wrist, stilling him.

“No.”

“Why?” Matty pulls his wrist out of George’s grip, lowering himself down on top of him so the pink fabric that’s gone almost translucent with sweat drags along George’s torso. “You like the ones off the streets? You like a pretty face in the gutter?” George’s lip is plump from suction and shining when Matty presses his lips into it again. The inside of George’s mouth is sweet and salty like Matty’s now, and Matty likes it, putting himself inside George. “I bet you’d like to screw me up the wall outside some dingy club with your fingers in my mouth.”

George groans and arches as Matty slides his torso over his chest, the thinnest, wet friction existing where the viscose drags on skin.

“If you’d like,” George murmurs, pulling up to nuzzle Matty’s damp neck and whisper into the skin, “I’d do it to your tight hole until you climbed up the concrete.” Matty head spins and he grips onto George’s arm. “Leave you dripping come in the street.” Matty watches his fingers turning white, George’s arm turning pink under them. George tugs at the back of Matty’s top with a fist, and Matty feels droplets of his own sweat land on his spine. “Like you’re dripping now.”

Matty lurches forward and George grips onto him and flips their bodies so they’re lying on their sides.

“Inside,” Matty is whining, his internal balance shot and listening to himself gasping as George’s fingernails leave twin semi-spheres of pink crescents on his shoulder blades.

“You went down on her?” George pants, tongue pushing into Matty’s mouth.

“Uh-huh,” Matty gasps, trying to concentrate with his cock rubbing in the perspiration on George’s belly.

“Let her come in your mouth?” George sticks his finger inside Matty’s mouth and Matty’s eyes try to roll back in his head.  
  
“No.”

George licks the corner of his mouth, messy and mocking on Matty’s face.

“Where did you put your come?”

“Inside, inside,” Matty chokes out, telling, begging. “Put some in me.”  

George buries his face in Matty’s hair and lets out a guttural sound that makes Matty shudder. He presses his finger into Matty’s rim and hisses.

“I, no, it’s too…much.”

Matty realises that George is probably sensitive from wanking off in the evening. His cock pulses uselessly thinking about it.

“What did you do with _your_ come?”

George’s laugh is muted in his throat.

“Licked it off my fingers, I s’pose.”

Matty’s tongue feels so thick in his mouth he’s amazed George’s tongue can fit in there. George slides up his body and his cock pushes up under Matty’s ribs.

“You’re pretty mental,” Matty says more softly than he’d intended to as he guides George’s cock between his thighs.

 “I like lying around, thinking about nothing. Getting there in as long as I like. Like, going in and out of it.”

Matty looks at his eyes incredulously.

“What pills…?” he gives up, pushing up on his elbow like he’s gonna go. “If you’d prefer to play with yourself alone-”

“No,” George pushes the head of his cock between Matty’s thighs and Matty swallows. George rubs it up and down, thumbing Matty’s thigh, making the skin stretch pink. “Pretty good, innit?”  There’s enough sweat on Matty’s thighs and enough stickiness on George’s cock that when George thrusts up, his cock pushes straight through the groove between Matty’s closed thighs, his balls pressing into the thigh Matty’s lying on.

“Pretty alright.” Matty feels the blunt pressure of George’s cock and adjusts his hips, grinding down slightly, feeling the sweat slide down his neck. George pulls back until the head of his cock is nudging at Matty’s closed thighs again, and Matty grabs onto his waist and moans in spite of himself. George pushes in and out five times like that, Matty’s fingernails digging into his waist, and then he moans Matty’s name, clutches his thigh, and thrusts in for real.

Matty wriggles forward, moving closer to George’s chest as George’s cock slides back and forth between his thighs. George puts his other hand on his waist and shoves him up so his erection is pressing into George’s belly, closing the space for him. Matty tries to clench his thighs into each other like a vice, and George’s curses, but it only lasts for five minutes until his muscles don’t wanna stay tense. George presses down when they start quivering from the pressure, doing the work for him, one large hand playing with his thigh. He slides his fingers up under Matty’s top and twists his nipple, pressing their lips together and playing with Matty’s hair while the wet push of their mouths goes on and on.

Matty’s cock is sliding up and down in the dip of George’s belly, pumping slow-building pleasure up his ribs and down his thighs, and he almost jumps out of his skin when he feels it fisted in wet fabric. Matty pulls off George’s lips to look down, eyes widening at the view of his cock in George’s fist, wrapped in wet pink viscose, the head poking up into a spot that’s beginning to look noticeably wetter than the rest. His eyes fly up to George. George is looking down too. He pulls his fist once up Matty’s cock, eyes fluttering and licking his lips while Matty whines.

“Pretty.” George looks up at Matty’s eyes then, white teeth flashing like lights. “Put your come in it.”

The pressure of George’s fist is rough and perfect as it slides up and down his cock, George’s thumb pushing in at the base. The friction of the wet viscose is excruciating in George’s grip, the sensitivity of the soft skin on his cock settling into something which spills up into his ribs. It’s a feeling he sometimes gets while he’s performing; deep, plush, lured back to George by a shining, internal fibre of light.

“ _Finish_ it,” he pants, and George twists his wrist and pulls like he understands Matty’s body like an extra limb, _which he might_ , Matty thinks, colours swimming behind his eyes, until Matty puts his face in his drummer’s chest and comes into the pink fabric like it’s going to go on forever.

The colours grow brighter and paler, and Matty feels like that line, pink, white, grey, blue, black, stuck inside his chest and connected in George’s, is tugged and tugged. It’s a moment before he’s conscious of the individual parts of his body again, his lips wide open and wet, panting on George’s skin. He pulls them off and slowly looks around the room.

“Ugh.” He looks down at George’s fist, still lightly circled around him, holding the fabric stretched so it doesn’t cling back to Matty’s ribs with come still in it. Matty’s body’s leeched of energy and hypersensitive, his thighs twitching where George’s cock is nudging them. “I think I’m hallucinating.”

George frowns.

“Like someone put something in your drink?”

“No, I-” Matty realises George hasn’t finished yet and looks him in the eye. “Do you want to lick me out?”

The wet splash of George’s come on his thighs is and isn’t shocking. Matty collapses on his arm and listens to George cursing. The sounds seem deep and sweet in the thick atmosphere and pale foggy light feebly climbing into the room from the lower skyline outside. When George’s grip on his top loosens he pulls it off and flings it onto the floor, not willing to put in the effort to prevent it from dripping come on the bed and wherever it lands. George is breathing like he’s just run five miles. Matty rubs his thighs together experimentally and winces.

“Are you _sure_ you jerked off tonight? This is like, a bucketload.”

George snorts.

“Charming, Matty.”

“It’s your body.”

George looks at him and presses his fingers into Matty’s forehead.

“You alright though?”

“Glass of water,” Matty tells him, nuzzling into the pillow. George is looking at him with an unreadable expression but Matty’s eyelids are too heavy to look into his eyes for more than a moment.

George gets off the bed, and Matty watches the pattern of his spine as he looks around for his swipe key. George puts it in but doesn’t turn the lights on, and Matty listens to the low whistle of the air-con turning on and watches those bumps from the nape of his neck to the base of his lower back shine damp in the darkness.

“It looks so good,” he mumbles, and George turns and squints at him, polluted light from the city catching his cheekbone before he shrugs and bends down to get some bottled water out of the mini-bar. He pours it into a glass and brings it to Matty, lowering himself down beside him and nudging his lips with the edge of it. Matty thinks about snapping that it’s fine and he’s not an infant, and then parts his lips slightly and lets George drip water into his system. He almost goes cross-eyed trying to look at the letters on the glass: ‘C R Y S T A L’. Matty looks into George’s eyes and thinks that it describes the moment more precisely than he’d like.

“Your pupils look a bit big.”  
  
“I was probably just woozy,” Matty replies, a flush pouring over his skin in spite of the icy water as he lies down and thinks about coming in colours, blinded like that. “This room is like fucking pudding.”

George looks at him for a while, naked with his feet flat on the floor, leaning one arm on his knee.

“Were you being serious?”

“About hallucinating? No, George, I made that up to look cool.”

“No, the other one. Thing.” George’s tongue swipes unconsciously over his mouth.

 _Oh,_ Matty thinks, and his soft cock attempts to pulse on his thigh. _I’d love to know myself._

“No, I just wanted you to finish before I died from breathing in this musky come air.”

George grins.

“You like musk. Like those pink musk sticks.”

“That’s not what musk is, George, you idiot.”

“I know what musk is. It’s like, what girls smell like when they’re wet. And you.” He gestures vaguely between Matty’s legs.

Matty narrows his eyes.

“What, when I’m _wet_ , you dick?”

George looks into his eyes, eyes dark and cloudy and serious for some reason.

“No. Your skin.”

Matty thinks about that for a while, sliding in and out of consciousness.

“What the fuck?” he protests fuzzily when he feels George wipe his thighs and pick him up.

“Other one,” George mumbles, sounding a bit groggy as well. George deposits Matty onto the other bed, and Matty wonders if it was a long while: him lying around with George sitting by his side. “Mine’s like a swamp.” George scrunches his nose. “I think there’s a pull-out. I’ll sleep there if you like.”

The air-con is pushing soft, sweet air over his skin now, and Matty looks at George like he’s not very clever.

“Why?”

George lies down behind him and rubs his fingers over the pink scrape Matty’s zipper’s left just above his crotch. Matty feels strangely content, his gut twisting in uncertainty at the sheer _peace_ of it.

“Last show. Looking forward to it?”

“What?”

“Going home, Matty.”

Matty thinks of George’s cock nudging into his skin on impersonal white sheets, of George pushing his thighs back in the bunks, of George looking at him with lust and performance high in his eyes backstage, irises dark and bright and still somehow infused with pink light.

_No, no, no, no, no._

“No, George, I hate being in a familiar place and stoned any night I like and _no flying_.”

George chuckles close to the back of his neck.

The last thing Matty remembers before he loses consciousness is George’s fingers, wrapping around his arm like a bracelet.

 

*

 

George misses Matty like a phantom limb when he’s not about. He doesn’t notice it at first, living in his new place in the peaceful lull between touring, because he figures it’s the peace itself that’s got him a bit disoriented and forgetful. He understands it more when he finds himself speaking to Matty over a glass of milk in the kitchen when Matty’s not actually there.

“Matty…” he begins, and then looks around at the kitchen benches and blinks. Matty isn’t leaning or sitting or expressively nattering away on any of them. George frowns into his glass and dials Matty a minute after he’s finished it.

Matty answers with a noise which is something between a sigh and grunt, which means he’s doing something he doesn’t like with his hands. George pictures Matty with his phone pressed between his ear and shoulder, bending over fiddling with something under the sink and cursing. Thinks about his long pale fingers getting pink and tense on the silver.

“What you up to?”

“Probably shouldn’t’ve put all the coffee grinds in the sink.”

George collapses on the sofa, rubbing his knuckles across his lips to hide a smile, and then it occurs to him that Matty’s not looking at him.

“I promise I’m not gonna do it again if it just fixes itself _this_ time,” Matty is muttering to himself, and George listens to his voice and feels his pulse give an odd push in the direction of the phone.

“Did you unscrew the wrong part again?”

“Screw you, George.”

George listens to the sound of movement and pictures Matty straightening up, adjusting his clothes without looking at them and wandering out of the room with a fed-up look in his dark eyes, writing the problem off as a ‘later’ one.

“What’ve you been up to today?”

“You’re like a broken record, George, what d’you think I’ve been up to? Resting, innit? Whatever the fuck I like, plenty of absolutely _nothing_. Might go to a party tonight.”

George hears rustling and the sound of the phone getting jumbled about and thinks Matty must be taking his top off. He thinks about Matty arching and twisting his neck in front of the mirror, playing with his hair and picking a blouse for the party. His cock twitches slightly inside his jeans and George looks down at the crotch of his pants and thinks, _Seriously_? His pulse picks up at the slight sound of more rustling and a curse from Matty, and he pops the top button.

“With a mate?”

“No, George, with a strange child I found, you’re full of pertinent questions tonight.”

“You’re pretty when you’re sarcastic.”

Matty’s silent for a minute, but the swishing noises of the clothes are also gone.

“I suppose you’ve been drinking all the milk in the fridge because you’re so stoned you’ve decided it tastes like cream again.”

“I think I drank the actual cream once…” George muses. Matty laughs, and George’s thumb rubs unconsciously into his crotch.  
  
“You were just stood there, funnelling it into your face like ‘Matty, this is _really_ creamy, this, like, _Matty_.’” Matty imitates him with such a pretty little lilt that George finds himself rubbing his knuckles up and down along his cock. He slides his fingers under the closed fly, thinking he’s losing his mind without the familiarity of touring.

“My skin around my mouth looked like shit for two days.”

“You looked pretty alright,” Matty says, and George inhales slightly too fast through his mouth, his fingers squeezing his cock inside his jeans.

Matty makes a sound that George doesn’t understand.

“Are you playing with yourself?”

“What?” George guiltily pulls his hand out of his jeans.

Matty’s breath whistles incredulously through his teeth and George wants to taste it.

“You’re a liar, George. You’re breathing like…Well go on then.”

George’s pulse is thudding and he’s flushing on his sofa with no one around and he doesn’t understand that either.

“Probably time for me to get a girlfriend,” he jokes.

There’s a pause, and then George hears Matty adjusting the phone, probably so he can hold a shirt up to his chest.

“Pink flowers or black flowers?”

George feels a bit dizzy.

“Uhh…probably the pink flowers? I didn’t know you had one with black flowers.”

“Black flowers it is.”

There’s a stiffness in Matty’s voice that George doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t like it, about as strongly as he doesn’t like anything. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he runs his fingers along the skin there, trying to calm himself down between the unsettling feeling and the pumping pulse and the residual arousal flitting over his skin.

“Matty, I love you mate.”

Matty sighs.

“I’m going to the party.”

 

*

 

Matty does go to the party, or George assumes he did anyway, as he shows up on George’s front steps at four in the morning looking fit as anything and wasted, in the blouse with the pink flowers, swaying in the security light with his smudged eyeliner like a pretty sort of dirty flower himself.

They rub off on each other with their jeans around their thighs until they come in snarl of limbs on the sofa. Matty’s stomach muscles are still pulsing slightly when George wipes them off with some tissues from the coffee table, and George lets it be less perfunctory than usual, feels the twitching skin for as long as he likes.

Matty nestles his head into George’s chest.

“You’re a twat,” the singer mumbles into his skin.

George puts his fingers softly into Matty’s hair, and closes his eyes.

 

*

 

Matty comes over one night to work on songs. George has a little studio space set-up at his new place, which he’s pretty pleased with, though he spends most of his time in it tinkering with random shit instead of working.

This evening though he’s been playing with an old track they’d discarded because it wasn’t working. George thinks he’s got it, now. He puts one arm around Matty’s shoulder and pulls him into a sort of non-committal hug when the singer walks in the door. Matty starts a little and then places one hand between George’s shoulders: a soft, solid pressure. George inhales the smell of Matty’s hair and his leather jacket and then uncurls his arm and starts talking about the song.

Matty is listening attentively, pulling off his jacket as George leads him into the studio.

“If we distort this part here, like,” George’s fingers work over the dials, liking the way the song splinters into glittering sections, liking the growing appreciation in Matty’s eyes as he listens to it. “And then we loop your voice for this last part…” He shows Matty what he wants to do with it and it’s _close_ but it’s not quite _it_ , not with Matty in his peripheral vision, legs wound slightly around each other and eyes bright on George’s fingers, with that voice up for use with no one else around.

He looks up at Matty.

“Actually I think it’d work better if you harmonised with yourself on that last part. And not with the vocal we’ve got now. Like one loaded with it, and then, if your voice was softer with it, I think- what?” Matty is looking at him with a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

“With ‘it’? You’re just mumbling to yourself, George. You’re so vague.”

“With the emotion. In the lyrics,” George gestures vaguely, a bit put-out because Matty and he are usually pretty symbiotic while they’re working on songs. “It’s about self image, innit? It’s like...prettied up, but it collapses in the last verse. Into like…sincerity. I think the last verse should be more…persuasive.” Matty’s openly smirking now and George trails off. “You understood what I meant in the first place.”

“Uh-huh, but it’s a riot to watch you try and explain yourself like a normal person.”

Matty’s eyes are dancing and he’s leaning up on his toes a bit. George looks at his eyes and smiles without meaning to. Like it’s impossible not to.

“You’re a proper little shit. In front of the mic, now.”

 

*

 

Matty looks and sounds like a proper colour in a greyscale, exuding that pretty intimacy that _magnetises_ people to him on stage. He’s got his long fingers pressed into his headphones and his eyes closed, performing the last verse in that soulful wail that sometimes sends a shot up George’s spine. He’s arching up on his toes again in the booth, shoulders pushing forward like they’re sheltering the mic. George looks at the line of skin above his skinnies and listens to his voice and feels a stronger desire than he’s done in weeks.

Matty’s eyelashes fan back as his lips inch off of the mic and then he’s flat on his feet, looking at George expectantly through the glass. George switches the mic off and looks at him for a minute, until Matty gestures for him to tell him what’s going on, pointing at the switch. George flicks it.

“Your voice is so good tonight.”

“‘Your voice is so good tonight’,” Matty mocks, dropping his voice lower.  “You’re a loser.” His eyes are glittering, bright with that indefinable, magnetic light.

“I want to fuck you now.”

Matty opens the door of the booth and walks out, watching George with those eyes.

“What of it?” Matty leans nonchalantly against the mixing board in front of George, one eyebrow raised. George closes in on him, nudging his way in between his thighs so that Matty’s almost sitting on the board.

“You look like something else,” George whispers into Matty’s neck, awe and interest in the dark place between Matty’s thighs mingling in his voice. Matty smirks, eyes flashing on his.

“I look like _nothing_ else.”

George strokes his fingers along Matty’s jaw, and Matty lets him lift it, but when George goes to press his lips into Matty’s the singer turns his face away.

“Did you like that version?”

“I loved it.”

They collide like they’re short on time, faces pressed into one another like their lips, Matty’s fingers on his face and his shoulders. Matty’s backing onto the mixing board as George sucks on his tongue, pulling off to curse as the dials dig into his arse and then licking inside George’s mouth again. George pushes forward, loving the feeling of Matty’s pulse under his tongue. Matty’s thighs spread as far apart as they can for balance as he leans back, and George grabs them with both hands and rubs his thumbs into the tight muscles. Matty moans into his mouth and George pulls back to look at him.

Matty’s hair’s gotten in his face, his lips wet and puffy from George’s mouth. George leans in and licks a wet circle around Matty’s parted lips, sliding his hand down the soft fabric of Matty’s black top, feeling the singer’s ribs heave like he’s ready. He pulls back again and looks down under the line of Matty’s cock, stiff under his fly, at the weak spot under the black fabric at the centre of his spread thighs. He looks at Matty’s eyes and licks his lips, his cock aching so much it feels like it’s going to push through the fabric coating it. Matty leans forward, lips parted, eyes black and wide. His fingers fan over George’s cheek and he pushes his thumb inside George’s mouth. George looks into Matty’s eyes and twists his tongue around it, trying to keep the look in his eyes steady with his pulse like a sledgehammer.

Matty pushes his thumb deep inside his mouth, his eyes glazed so prettily that George moans.

“Sod it,” Matty avers, and pushes George down.

Matty curses as George shoves him back on the mixing board, his face between Matty’s legs and his fingers pulling the singer’s fly down, teeth pulling at the scrape which isn’t quite gone above Matty’s crotch. Matty’s fingers are struggling to push his skinnies and underwear down his thighs and George curls his fingers into them and wrenches, peeling them off Matty’s legs until he’s half-naked and spread like a centrefold in front of George’s face. George chuckles at the thought and then he looks at Matty’s skin and his cock pulsates so hard he almost blacks out.

“ _God_ , Matty…”

There’s a flush running down Matty’s whole body, and George leans in and pinches the inside of his thigh, making it pinker, liking the way Matty squirms, the way it makes his thighs jiggle slightly and his arse press awkwardly into the board.

“Pray to me later. This is pretty sodding uncomfortable.” Matty’s voice is aroused and unsettled and George loves the sound of it, undoing his own fly and stroking his cock as he leans in, inhaling the musky smell of Matty’s skin.

“And is this uncomfortable?” he murmurs, and presses the flat of his tongue into the rim of Matty’s arse.

“N-no,” Matty stutters, and his thigh twitches under George’s fingers.

George rubs his tongue up and down on that spot, his cock dripping in his fist as the musky taste fills his mouth and Matty’s breath stutters like he’s _into_ it.

George looks at the furled pink-tinged skin, wet from his saliva and runs his tongue over his mouth, licking up the any last ounce of the taste it finds.

“It feels so good on my tongue,” he murmurs. It’s not like he’s not done this with girls, but with Matty it’s somehow stronger and sweeter all at once, familiar and new and a lingering musky film on his lips. He looks at Matty’s thighs, pushed open and shivering slightly. “Tense it for me.”

“Ugh,” Matty protests, eyelashes fluttering and eyes glazed like a fucking cake when George looks up at him. George nibbles on the inside of his thigh and licks it, looking up at Matty through his eyelashes and pumping his cock. Matty flushes and George sees his shoulders tense, his eyes dropping down as Matty’s whole body screws tight and he tenses his arse.

“ _Fuuck_ …” George almost loses it from only looking, his fist wringing his cock to stop the building pleasure in his balls from spilling over. He laps at Matty’s arse again, twisting his tongue around it. “You taste a bit like soap…” George smirks, resisting the compulsion to wipe his mouth because he likes the mess. “Did you shower before you came over? Think about it? Really polish it so-”

Matty pulls his hair and George curses.

“ _Shut up_ and use your mouth.”

George leans in, presses his fingers into Matty’s thigh, and goes to town.

He finds out what Matty likes the most: when there’s wet pressure pushing up on that tight hole; the suction of George pushing his whole face into his skin with his thumbs holding him open. George’s fist is practically wet from his precome by the time he pushes the first centimetre of his tongue inside Matty’s arse.  

Matty curses and his fingers try to pull his own thighs further apart.

George shudders as he pulls back and looks at those fingers digging uselessly into Matty’s skin. He works his fist up and down his cock, trying to ease the pressure, not wanting to finish yet. His face is wet with his own spit and he loves it, loves the tinge of Matty’s skin in it. Matty looks down at him and flushes like he’s under a pink stage light. He looks into George’s eyes.

“Put it inside, please.”

 _I would’ve begged you, to do this_ , George thinks, and leans in.

Matty cries out when George’s tongue pushes inside him, and something shoots up George’s spine just like it does sometimes when Matty sings, like he’s injected something so strong it’s filled up his spinal cord with liquid pleasure. The pressure on his tongue inside Matty is excruciating, the wet muscle forced to stiffen to push in and out. George listens to Matty’s fingers trying uselessly to clutch at the dials, _listens_ to his pulse when he pulls on his cock, the up and down tilt of his skinny body telling George what’s going on. George isn’t sure why he’s so positive he can hear it, until he realises that Matty’s pulse inside him, strong and drumming and sweet on George’s tongue, is in sync with his own pulse, thudding in his ears, flush against his wrists. He pulls his fist up his dripping cock and when Matty’s pulse butterflies around his tongue, George’s feels the pressure mounting just under the head of his cock, his come pushing out of him as Matty’s arse clenches around his tongue.

He manages to look up during the last pulsations of his orgasm, his chest heaving as he tries to look at Matty’s face. Matty’s cock pulses, spilling the last of his come into a glistening white line between his ribs. Matty’s looking into thin air, eyes black and glossy, lips pink and glossy, like a doll.

“Matty…you still with us?”

Matty looks down at him, then.

“I’m still pretty wet inside.”

Matty’s face is unreadable. George rests his head on Matty’s thigh, and closes his eyes.

 

*

 

George is woken up by a growing sliver of light from his doorway. He’s alone in his bed, groggy from a dream about Matty turning into a ragdoll, pretty and limp and impossible to wake up, his glassy eyes never looking quite at George.

“Sodding awful dream,” George grumbles at himself, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, trying to work out what the light that’s woken him up is. He’d gone out like a light the minute he’d gone to bed. It had been too late for Matty to reasonably go home. Matty’d mumbled something about wanting to sleep on the sofa, which made no sense to George, because he’s got a couple of guest bedrooms now, but he’d been too tired to argue with him. Matty likes to curl up in a small ball sometimes anyway. Usually when he’s stressed, like the lack of space makes him safe from something else fitting inside it: like the intangible things he gets lost and lonely in his pretty head over are physical, for a while.

George wonders why he’s been noticing it so much lately, why he sometimes looks at Matty, unconscious and bent into himself like one of those bonsai trees, and thinks about uselessly trying to fit into those spaces with him.

It looks like one of the lights in the hall is on. It’s slowly washing over George as the door opens wider, and there’s a slight frame in that triangle of light. When George’s vision clears he sees Matty leaning into his doorframe, eyes puffy from sleep. His posture is withdrawn, like it is when he doesn’t want to admit he’s reluctant about something.

“You alright?”

Matty looks at him and folds his arms over his pale chest.

“Cold.”

George pulls down one side of the duvet and drops his hand on the sheets beside him. Matty steps out of the triangle of light and closes the door. It’s dark again now, but George listens to the muffled sound of Matty’s toes on the floor and feels the bed press down under his knees. Matty’s legs press into his and his fingers curl slightly in George’s ratty t-shirt. George puts his fingers on the base of Matty’s spine and rubs, and Matty turns his face into the pillow and exhales. George’s cock is a bit swollen in his sleep pants, but it’s a pleasant non-immediate sort of fullness, a lazy response to Matty arranging and re-arranging his legs around George’s. George is content to leave it.

He doesn’t wake up again until what must be near five in the morning, because there’s a weak light filtering through the curtains. Matty’s eyes look dark and round in the pale light and the pattern of his breath is restless. George sighs.

“Watching me sleep?” he jokes, trying not to sound too concerned about anything because it’ll only make Matty more anxious.

“Problems sleeping, you wanker.”

George presses his chest into Matty’s and feels Matty’s cock pressed against him as his thigh shifts.

“I understand why,” he says, nudging his thigh forward.

“I didn’t face the other way because I didn’t want to wake you up,” Matty insists dully, and George looks at his eyes.

They look at each other for a minute, and George’s pulse slowly changes into something less steady and more aware.

“Well, I’m up now,” he murmurs, and Matty looks at him and presses his thumb into George’s lower lip.

“Could you…do it again?” Matty’s voice is low and there’s a pretty sort of waver in it, uncertain and inviting.

“I could.”

There’s a little rush of air through Matty’s nose that’s almost a chuckle.

“Not, like, physically, George, I mean…”

“Now?” George’s pulse quickens. “Like…” he tugs at the soft trousers he’d lent Matty to sleep in. They’re too big and they’ve already fallen off his hips. Matty nods and pulls his legs up and out of them, watching George with a coy look as George rolls onto his back and guides him to sit astride his chest. George pulls Matty’s thighs until Matty’s arse is positioned over his face and then slides his thumbs inside the cleft  and pulls his arse apart.

“Lower yourself onto my face,” George murmurs, and Matty lowers down.

George works his tongue over Matty’s arse until Matty’s pushing down onto his face for it, his voice low and cursing. His words are lost on George, with his whole face pressed into Matty’s arse until there’s only Matty’s skin, musky and wet, filling up his consciousness, sending low murmurs of pleasure under his skin. The muscle in his tongue is so sore that he doesn’t understand how he’s still going on, but he’s fixated by the strong, musky flavour of Matty’s skin.

He loses his ability to breathe for a minute when Matty comes, pushing down and forward into his face, and George waits it out, wondering what Matty looks like with his spine arching in the pale light. When Matty heaves himself off his face and lies down beside him George feels that sugar rush sensation, from his oxygen coming back and from the look on Matty’s face.

“Like nothing else,” he murmurs, but Matty’s passed out anyway.

 

*

 

George manages to sleep for one more hour. When he opens his eyes the curtain’s split open and Matty’s a skinny figure on the balcony. George brings him out a t-shirt but Matty softly shakes his head and blows a cloud of weed into George’s face. He looks deep in thought, his nipples stiff from cold and his legs shivering slightly in his ripped jeans.

“It’s a bit nippy out,” George says, pulling his own arms across his chest. He holds onto his shoulders and rubs his face into one forearm, thinking about his pillow inside.

“What did you dream about?” Matty asks.

“What?”

“You were making noises. When I came into your room.”

George closes his eyes and absorbs the feeling of his own eyelashes heavy on his skin.

“Nothing.”

Matty’s eyelashes flicker away dismissively and he blows a trail of smoke into the pink and yellow daybreak.

“It’s going to have to be different on tour,” Matty says, with an air of finality.

George rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, it’s a whole new tour, you have an amazing vision, we get it, Matty, we’re not gonna let you down.”

Matty blinks at George’s grumbling.

“No, not that.” Matty gestures vaguely at what looks like the balcony, but George supposes it could be him. “You and I’ve got to do things differently. Before it’s impossible not to…” Matty trails off, looking lost in thought again, but George’s pulse slams into his neck in a way that makes his skin feel like glass.

“It’s fine.”

Matty looks at him with a deadpan expression. There’s pink and yellow from the sky in his hair. _This is ridiculous_ , George thinks, without really understanding what he’s thinking about.

He leans on the railing and points at the sunrise.

“It’s not often you see the sky…looking like that.”

Matty sighs.

“You’re not wrong.”

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Promises for next chapter: blowjobs. That's the only promise tho. 
> 
>  [My tumblr](http://nacrevoit.tumblr.com/)


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